Becoming the "Expert"

[Jeffery]

I'm old school in terms of defining a person as an expert, though I get what you mean, so I'll just call them "successful marketers" and they all have one thing in common which is the ability to "Reach out and touch someone" in ways that people will tend to market the "successful marketers" as so called experts.

I used to be old school too but have tried to break the habit because it was holding me back. I was introduced to levels of expertise. For example, #1 represents a certain level of knowledge and #10 represents mastery and the ability to help others. 

If I'm at level #1 at cleaning viruses out of PCs, designing websites, email marketing, etc. that means I know more than people at level #0 (no knowledge). So, I can legitimately go and help those folks with those tasks or teach them how to do it themselves.

Where the problem comes is when I'm at a low level but I claim to be at a higher level. That's fake it till you make it or lying. I may not be Peter Norton but I can get your PC secure better than billions of other people on the planet. Isn't that worth something?

It is worth a lot in my opinion. I relate what you said to how people in forums represent themselves as being experts. Let's say one person, the Original Poster (OP),  represents themself as a level 10 and other people that reresent themselves below level 10 know for a fact that what the OP said was in fact.. total BS. That in itself is what I call the OP "Fake it until you make it" and unfortunately if the OP is not called-out then they typically become the forum expert.

However, if they are called out like the member "Sparrow" who represented himself as an expert and by Warrior Forum endorsement was called out by Mike, wherein simple sleuth techniques proved without a doubt that "Sparrow" engaged the community (and certain news outlets) in misleading and harmful "expertise" then the community at large realizes that "Sparrow" was "Fake it until you make it" and consequently tarnished the WF Reputation.

In that case, both members had a level of expertise. It's just that one person's expertise was factual and the other person's expertise could not stand to the test.