You are assuming that the site owner's goal is to get a lot more of the BJJ community to use the database. It is not. The site has existed for years, and it is clear that it will only represent a drop in the bucket of the global BJJ community without changes in approach and/or better promotion. I mean, there are only 82 verified profiles in the entire country of Brazil at the moment of this writing. There have been all kinds of suggestions on increasing participation, but ultimately, it's his project and he is not interested.

It depends on Your pov. Round about 5.000 BB all over the world are an alternative voice that should be heard. It is not the target to be the only alternative to ibjjf in my eyes. But at the moment it simply is.💁🏻‍♂️

Is it necessary to grow faster? I'm not sure; ... not (if) it could compromise quality or trustworthiness of the data

If even the registering process of today is too much of a barrier

I think it might be worth it to define some sort of a, well, mission for BeltChecker, other than "an experiment" (sorry if that's been done and I am just playing years old tapes). It could be something like "a high quality database of BJJ practitioners around the world", and could be measured on the success of its mission by, say, how high the quality is, and what percentage of BJJ practitioners (blue belt+ practitioners?) it represents. If those were the measures, then pure growth would not necessarily be a success; one would look at whether the % growth of the site is higher or lower than the % growth of BJJ practitioners around the world.

I would also suggest that there might be ways to dramatically increase the number of *quality* profiles by using more promotion (including promotion by the current users) and figuring out ways to lower barriers to entry without sacrificing quality.

You can probably crowdsource a lot of ideas here and pick the ones that seem more in line with the spirit of the site you'd want to maintain. One idea I'd suggest (and I apologize if maybe it's already been discussed or even implemented) is letting (triple verified) academy owners enter the data for their students, generating invitation emails stating that their instructor signed them up. This could skip the name/email verification without lowering the quality of the data, since it came from a verified third party. Sure, a lot of students would not reply, but a great number would - and white/blue belts would get verified automatically, since their instructor already verified it (right?).

Yeah I guess we could come up with some arbitrary measure of the project being 'successful'. One could be to create a high quality, public database of practitioners with trustworthy content. By this measurement we are by far #1 in the world at the moment. Another could be to be a widely acknowledged alternative to the black belt degree promotions offered by IBJJF and old-generation black belts. As a first in the world, we have managed to do this and 450+ promotions have been approved by the community. So by those measurements, I would say that Beltchecker is quite the success. I don't think we should run too far with the notion that Beltchecker was 'just an experiment'. I might have said that at some point. But more than anything, Beltchecker is an idea. An idea of trying to do things different than what always has been done. And the fact that we're still here and still growing, I think is a sign that we were onto something. Is there still room for improvement? Absolutely! Would it be cool with even more growth? YES! Would I love to work full time on this project? Hell yes, but nobody wants to pay me for that 😂

Have you considered sponsoring/hosting a tournament?

... I am not sure how we could lower that barrier?

What could be done could be an invitation function that sends the students and email with a link to create a profile. But they would have to do it themselves, for sure.

This site and idea is great for bjj as a community for the whole and to get verification with proof and lineage. Most places around the world already has checks and balances, which is great. Me and my teammates are not ibjjf verified and we never gave a shit, focus on training and smashing, old school way. Of course if I have to go through that, my coach would say, "Talk to Carlson", which is a sign that Jr wants money to get anything ibjjf, then I would back away. Unfortunately they banned Globetrotters, which I asked Christian about on FB last year, that was a huge blow to the art (but not ibjjf bottom line), so this community is good to counter ibjjf. Will it replace them? Of course not, but ibjjf isn't the say all that be all for this art. I teach in china and been here since 2011, I seen many people get promoted by $$ and off 1 dubious tournament win within china, yet then they go abroad they get smashed, but they were "promoted and certified". There are checks and balances on here and can see who are legit or not. There are checks and balances when someone walks into the gym wearing a belt and everyone lining up to test that someone (I'm old now but I enjoyed going to someone's gym and getting tested, while also smashing new higher belts walking into my gym), is the oldest form of checking ones mantle. So this is a great site for people to post their progress and lineage with votes from the community. I will tell some of my students to do this (if they speak English) and try to build it within china. Glad this is around for the community as a whole. Fuck ibjjf.

In Italy we have the UIJJ (https://www.uijj.org/) which organizes quite a few competitions and certifies belts. I registered my belts up to brown with both UIJJ and IBJJF, but now at 53 I no longer compete and I only train for fun. I registered my black belt only with UIJJ, since I believe registering with IBJJF is useful only for those who want to compete in their tournaments or certify students for their events.

Being new here I wasn't sure what to do, however looking through the forums and reading the information / comments provides guided me to ask for votes. I don't know if I know anyone on here personally, at least not that I have seen so far. I am fortunate enough to have trained under own very well known people and posted those pictures to help legitimize my claim. :) This might be an unpopular opinion but at almost 50 I am starting to think AI is the devil ... LOL ... it's ruining so many things ... Like being able to trust what you see. :/ I am enjoying learning how to use BeltChecker and see some new faces ... sometimes we get caught up in our own Jiu Jitsu bubble and don't make those important connections that create a larger stronger community. Also, I am super grateful that the people who voted for me took the time to look though my info and vote. @Christian I just wanted to say what a great process, and I love that the feedback and improvement / growth is welcome.

Has anyone ever submitted a completely fictional profile, waited for the community to verify it, and then revealed it as a test? Would an audit like this violate the terms of use? I suspect our collective “BS nose” is less reliable than we might think. We remember the fakes we catch, but we never discover the convincing fakes we approved. It's the survivorship bias, specifically the inability to factor in undetected false negatives. Has anyone ever audited the system with a fake? I also wonder whether profiles that sit for months on the “Profiles needing more votes to verify” list with little support should eventually time out. The site could remove them from the queue after some amount of time, provide some feedback for how to beef up their support, and encourage them to try again. That would 1) keep barriers low, 2) give applicants actionable feedback and 3) clear clutter from the pending list.

Has anyone ever submitted a completely fictional profile, waited for the community to verify it, and then revealed it as a test? Would an audit like this violate the terms of use? I suspect our collective “BS nose” is less reliable than we might think. We remember the fakes we catch, but we never discover the convincing fakes we approved. It's the survivorship bias, specifically the inability to factor in undetected false negatives. Has anyone ever audited the system with a fake?

I agree. About 20-25 years ago a college student signed up for one of the car forums I was on. He was not a car guy at all; had no background in cars. Nothing. Complete noob. In one semester on the forum he had established himself as an expert with opinions that were highly regarded on the forum. At the end of the semester he admitted what he had done and everyone was amazed.

Has anyone ever submitted a completely fictional profile, waited for the community to verify it, and then revealed it as a test? Would an audit like this violate the terms of use? I suspect our collective “BS nose” is less reliable than we might think. We remember the fakes we catch, but we never discover the convincing fakes we approved. It's the survivorship bias, specifically the inability to factor in undetected false negatives. Has anyone ever audited the system with a fake? I also wonder whether profiles that sit for months on the “Profiles needing more votes to verify” list with little support should eventually time out. The site could remove them from the queue after some amount of time, provide some feedback for how to beef up their support, and encourage them to try again. That would 1) keep barriers low, 2) give applicants actionable feedback and 3) clear clutter from the pending list.

I agree with all the good thoughts and views here. I think we should also remember that no vote is final. If anyone gets exposed as a fraud, having cheated with photos or whatever, the community can instantly withdraw and/or downvote. The verification is always “live” so to say, which is a strength of the system that we haven’t seen/needed in action yet. It’ll literally only take one forum post or downvote of a fraudulently verified profile to bring it down.

Although I kind of agree, I can't help but reminded of reddit witch-hunts and other similar mass down votes that have gone horribly wrong.