I don't know no folks I renewed my IBJJF Card and I also ordered my Beltchecker Card. I got the IBJJF one in the mail first. I guess what I'm saying is Christian needs to step up his post office game. Lol

Hey if I knew it was a race, I would have shipped yours with FedEx overnight!! :D :D :D

So far yes, a single case (1) of a completed profile whose rank has been disputed by the community for other reasons than incomplete promotion history. Kudos to the person in question for not deactivating his profile, and it has spawned interesting discussion on the forums.

I never vote for people I haven't met. Not planning to change that in future.

Funny how many people say belts, degrees etc. mean nothing (including you Christian) yet they are the strictest on voting. Almost doesn't make sense.

I get a ton of messages from people every day asking me to verify them

...

In the beginning I was holding my votes close to the body. Then we had a period where everyone tried to help get the ball rolling and I voted for a bunch I didn’t know but with trustworthy profiles. Now it seems like we have reached a self sustainable size of user base and I’m back to pretty much only voting for friends I’ve trained with and my own students :)

No one really needs my vote but I do enjoy it. Good vibes are always a bonus and I hope I am spreading that energy to my bjj brethren, plus as I told another guy on here, technically I am middle aged and that's what we do. lol You should see how I take selfies.. it's ridiculous. Lol

I think plenty of people have got verified by the power of your vote. ...Is this your selfie? :D

So there is a little bit of a Catch 22 with this. I come from a small school with few students who compete. It might be very difficult to get verified. I hope to compete this fall in an IBJJ Competition and was wondering how I was going to get verified. I am going to the BJJ Globetrotter Arizona Camp next month and figured I would make connections there. However a number of people who I do not know and have never rolled with votes for my profile and verified it? It renders the verification meaningless! Personally I am only going to vote for people I know or rolled with if not against. I feel that should be the policy’. Exceptions can always be made as needed but I feel no one should “verify” anyone they don’t have personal knowledge of!

I think I am the first person from my academy who has joined this site, so getting verification from someone I know and have rolled with might be difficult. However, I have competed in IBJJF tournaments as both a white and blue belt, and have podium pics to prove it, as well as competition dates in my profile which can be verified via the IBJJF website. I also have my IBJJF membership cards for whte and blue, and you can look up my competition ranking for Gi/no gi. Does that prove I'm a blue belt to your satisfaction? I can even provide a chain of photos and video showing Roger Gracie awarding my head professor his first 3 degrees last summer (it had been 10 years since they had been in the same place at the same time) complete with jokes to us students about being patient to wait for your stripes! Then I have a photo and video of me getting my blue belt last summer from the same professor. I think most/all of these pictures are in my profile, and according to my verification votes, it is why people I do not know verified me. I think that's acceptable in may case, and I recognize that some people don't have that. And then there's the poor souls who don't have a black belt to train under who train under a brown, purple, or even *gulp* a blue belt! As this site catches on and gains more momentum and legitimacy, I think the process will work itself out. I don't think it's a real danger to anyone except someone foolish enough to try and fake their belt rank, which as a practitioner I do not understand. White belt is the hardest and easiest belt, and if I were going to fake one, that'd be the one I faked. No one expects anything from you! :D No system is going to be both effective and perfect, and there's more than one way to bake the verification cake.

Low blow to the white belts.

Funny how many people say belts, degrees etc. mean nothing (including you Christian) yet they are the strictest on voting. Almost doesn't make sense.

If I am training under a well regarded black belt that is verified on this site and he has signed off on my promotion on this site, why isn't that good enough?

I had this in mind when I designed the system, but it just raises more questions, like if you trained with someone, are you still in a position to verify their belt rank? What if they put on a purple belt but, are really just blue belt but did pretty well in those 4 minutes you rolled? I think that just leads to even more uncertainties, so I ultimately decided to let the community organically figure out what would be the criteria for verification. ...WHICH also very well can change over time. We saw in the beginning that people held their cards close and only verified people they knew well. Then there sprung a culture of helping the site grow, so verification through a trustworthy looking profile of a stranger became a thing. Maybe now when we have a larger user base, this will again come to a hault and people will go back to only verifying friends and training partners. Who knows; regardless it's interesting to follow. And at the end of the day, whatever the average of the community as a whole decides is 'verification', that will be actual verification. Because the rules, regulations and culture of BJJ is just that; an average of what everyone agrees is correct behavior. Let's see, I'm excited :D

So we're basically doomed for Beltchecker I guess

I feel that in some countries like my own (Spain), where BJJ, the English language and technology don't really go along very well it will be very difficult to get verified. Much more when you consider that there are not many black belts here. My coach for example is a brown belt who lost years ago all realtionship with his former black belt coach (on the issue of his promotion to black belt and something he could not accept doing), he does not like BJJ politics at all, is also badly injured after a motorcycle accident and doesn't compete or train anymore (only teaches and occasionally rolls with us students). So we're basically doomed for Beltchecker I guess :) But we love him and training in our school, we learn a lot. He is also well respected by the community here. I guess what he would have to do is wait until one of his former friends and team mates get to black belt third degree (or second?? Everything is so confusing an ceremonial) and then get promoted. But BJJ got here not so long ago and its a super small community, and he doesnt really care at all about belts, he would never make the effort of having to go to some other school and ask another black belt for such a favor.