I think inflation is inevitable once the amount of black belts reach a certain critical mass. A training culture based on sparring and with heavy emphasis on competition will hold back the inflation (as it has done) but at some point, when we have 100.000 black belts, I am sure the standards will eventually drop. Just see how it has ended up for Judo, Karate, etc.

A community based approach could speed it up, but it could also slow it down. Given that approx. 10 black belts have to approve a rank here, as opposed to when only one black belt (with potential low standards) promotes and approves a belt. At least here, the community has the power to dispute low-standard promotions :)

How's judo? I've yet to meet judo BBs who wouldn't be legit teachers and/or spar-rers and/or competitors.

I've seen a few at seminars who have made me go hmmm but very few and don't have direct experience with them.

I've run into more than a handful of Judo black belts with questionable standards in sparring (although not the case in the majority of the time). I do have a lot of respect for their graduation requirement system with competition points, that should 100% be adopted as standard by BJJ as well.

The judo grading system in The Neth is smart (Judo Bond Nederland).

You can do the competition route and rack up a required amount of competition points, in which case you only have to demonstrate a few throws in a demo to a committee, and you get your rank.

If you win the nationals at brown you get a black belt on the podium.

You can also do the kata route, and study a shitload of kata and demonstrate those to a committee in a long ass exam. These old school judo kata are REALLY difficult to master, because they have to illustrate certain principles of action/reaction that have to been instantanious. You can't choreograph your way through them. People (recreational players) take years to get them right. And people fail them all the time.

As a high level ex-competitor once told me, it's impossible to correctly demonstrate judo kata and NOT be good at judo.

So it's either the fighting route, or the 'academic' route. At the end you arrive at approximately the same level of understanding.

Jorgen, in judo there are numerous ways to get promoted, as Daniel covered. In the end, its a board of people who determines when you get promoted (subjective) or its the people who decided to compete that year (subjective) and subject then to grading inflation.

What seems to be happening in the context of this site is the "Miracle of Aggregation", or that is the hope, and will be effective unless there is a systematic bias inherent in the incentive structure. Which, is possible, but its also fixable. I will discuss a potential negative and a potentially positive bias. The negative bias is that people are potentially more likely to just not vote than down vote. This may lead to inflated point totals.

Side note: What do you think the systematic bias is in getting promoted by someone you never train with but pay affiliation fees to? Or that you pay a monthly membership to and whom can indenture you to teach classes for super cheap (and with higher cultural esteem) if they promote you? Etc etc etc. The question then isn't which one is perfect, but which one has flaws you are okay with having.

As for the potentially positive (non-inflating) bias... is that it uses aggregation but it also is partially based on the old system. I don't think many people will be super successful at using the belt checker to promote themselves, nor do I think it will create an incentive for people to promote their students early. So after someone else says they are worthy then most people come on here to get further verification. Its more a second step than an only step, for most people.

I think overall the skill and knowledge level over the years, especially with the availability of dvds, youtube, and now entire online academies, has actually gone UP since I first started. Everyone is so worried about belt quality going down that I think it's had the opposite effect. The game has evolved and with it, its practitioners have gotten tougher and tougher. Perhaps one day that will reverse direction.... but this topic is brought up so often throughout the community, I think we are in a state of collective hyper-vigilance to safeguard against it. Just the mere fact of a site like this requiring "verification" by multiple sources is helping to maintain the integrity and standards of quality, in my opinion. If this were just a popularity contest site, it'd be different.... but from what I can see many if not most people are taking the time to actually do a little research to validate the profiles of people they don't know. There is no "purchasing" of validation. I think this site serves as a legitimate means of quality control in the BJJ world. The BJJ police are ever policing, after all!! LOL.