I think we should have one consistent requirement. Whatever qualifies one for membership should also qualify for jury duty, ranger duty, etc.
My $0.02
Article 3: Rangers (Administrators)
¶2: Eligibility of Members to Serve as Rangers
To serve as a Ranger, a member should be at least eighteen years of age, have been a member for six months while maintaining a continuous, visible, and contributory presence on the board, and have spent enough time on the experimental board to demonstrate an ability to perform the routine functions of a Ranger.
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¶3: Selection of Rangers
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The mayor will be responsible for keeping track of the eligibility of members, the order in which they enter the pool of full Rangers, and the actual scheduling of terms of office.
The Mayor is held accountable for determining what constitutes a ‘continuous, visible, and contributory presence,' approaching members so qualified to obtain their agreement to serve, and entering the names of those who volunteer into the roster of new entrants and then the training pool. Those rosters will be prominently posted, and volunteers will remain on the roster of new entrants for at least ten days.
We don't have a Mayor anymore, so that aspect is no longer valid. But we also do not have post count requirements for Rangers either. Merely a "a continuous, visible, and contributory presence on the board".
It's an interesting question, and one that I think would do us good to discuss. Is it post count? Is it the content of the posts? Whether or not the posts "contribute" to the community? Whether or not the person knows someone who is already an established member? I don't think we want to keep out "outsiders", but it has been more or less proven by time that we aren't going to get many, if any, outsiders anyway. At least not any who really want to become part of this community.
My suspicion is that ultimately it will prove difficult if not impossible to codify what is meant by "established member of the community". Really, it just boils down to common sense more than anything else, and that is something that defies being written into any sort of rule. But I think most of us could tell from a few posts whether a new member "gets it" , as Ax put it, or not.