I was reading a discussion concerning experience level in another thread and decided to create an entirely seperate discussion since the other seemed to get off track.

What criteria do each of you use to gauge your experience level and the experience level of others?

Is a person that keeps one snake for 20 year equal to a person that keep 20 snakes for 1 year?

If you keep 50 snakes and never have to deal with any health issues, does the person that keeps 1 snake that had to treat an RI have more experience?

If your animal gets an RI, is treated and lives, would you have any less experience if it dies? more experience?

Does a person keeping 200 ball pythons that has never hatched an egg have more experience than a person with a single pair producing clutchs of eggs each year?

There are so many different criteria for judging who is an expert and who is a novice. There are also many things involving reptiles that some can have a great knowledge and experience of one topic, but lack experience in another topic that is equally important.

So how are we to judge who is giving out good information and who is giving out bad information? Is going with the majority always best or does the majority just recycle information presented from a select few?