PA Bear [MS MVP] wrote:

This a**hole is NOT an MVP!

The Real Truth MVP wrote:
There is none.

Ah yes, very true, but then the status of MVP has been diluted by real
MVPs that choose to hide. You can't check on their credentials
because they chose to hide. Gee, would you trust a doctor, dentist,
or any other self-claimed professional whose credentials you could
not certify? That MVPs can hide so their credentials are not public
(which has nothing to do with divulging private information) pretty
much renders the who concept worthless. Anyone could claim they are
an MVP, like Patricia here claiming to be one (after nymshifting away
from her pcbutts1 moniker). You don't need to go ego-stroking your
status to announce your MVP status to other MVPs. That ego-stroking
is to announce yourself to non-MVPs in a newsgroup (i.e., to the
general populace that visit there). To the public, if your
self-claimed MVP credentials cannot be traced to those that provide
that certification then you don't have those credentials as far as
the public is concerned. Unless the status of MVP is traceable, it
means nothing.

I've looked at mvps.org. Didn't find anyone named "Bear" there.
Looked at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx.
There are couple of "bear" names with that substring but nothing that
would match on the "pa" part of your moniker. So just how *we*
non-MVPs visiting the newsgroups know YOU aren't yet another troll
pretending to be an MVP? We can't so the claim to be an MVP cannot
be verified which means the MVP title is not only worthless but
possibly deliberately misleading. Is there yet some other MVP
credentials list for checking on whether or not someone who claims to
be an MVP can actually be verified to be an MVP?

They make slight considerations for silly things but posting with "MVP"
when it can't be verified, IIRC, is not supposed to be done according to
their list of reqs. And of course posing is, well, just plain
stupidest, if there is such a word. It doesn't matter much though
because of the dilution of the title over, gosh, more than a decade now.

I'm not trying to ding a few good, very knowledgeable MVPs here for whom
I posess a lot of respect; all I'm doing is talking reality of the
situation. What it boils down to, is those who have earned respect for
their contributions and accuracy get it easily, the rest don't. Any
titles, in my book anyway, are pretty much inconsquential unless it
turns out to be someone I can hold in more than average esteem.

IMO the "best" list is the one right there on the entry page:
http://mvps.org/ .

My 2 ¢ anyway,

Twayne