@Arlette: just checked the Members List and there are 494738 registered members. While I appreciate that some folk will have been "promoted" to Gurus by a faulty algorithm, I can't believe it is anywhere close to half a million. The implication being that it might just have been easier to start with the existing Gurus and check if they matched or exceeded an interim criteria set, perhaps double the Expert criteria set. If they did, leave them as Gurus. If they don't, check to see if they match or exceed the newly documented criteria for an Expert. If they do, flag them as Experts. If they don't, but they'd been marked as Gurus that indicates that they probably qualify to be Valued Forum Contributors.

Now, I'm no database expert, but I'm pretty sure it's reasonably easy to pick out the users marked as Gurus and do something with them. And similarly, it would then be easy to do a similar exercise with the VCFs, checking if they qualify to move up to the Expert status ... assuming they wanted to.

I don't have access to the MI to determine the distribution of Gurus, VCFs and so on, but I'm guessing if you start working from the top, there's a lot less to do than any other approach. As an aside, I'm guessing you did have to process all the Gurus, except Andrew-R, in order to change the status anyway. So why make a load of work for yourselves ... which, incidentally, seems to be taking way more than a couple of days.

Apart from a Technical Team that don't seem to live up to the name, it doesn't appear as though you have anyone capable of planning and project management.

Regards, TMS