I've long thought that a key omission or difficulty for people reading the board is that unless you personally know some of the posters, you have no idea of their fitness level. What they describe as a 'difficult' hike could be physically impossible for you (certainly for me
)Hell, I'll be honest; sometimes stuff they describe as 'fun' would be for me like the Bataan Death March. Likewise, I think that sometimes posters have a hard time imagining the (much) less fit people who might be reading it. A lot of cognitive studies have shown that when we try to imagine unknown others, they turn out to be amazingly like us. 
But that's not true, of course. The depressing truth is that probably well over 90 percent of the American population (help me out here with some real numbers, Ze?) are probably not fit enough to comfortably climb four flights of stairs. Sixty percent are overweight or obese. The percentage of Americans who are at the fitness level of say, Bluerail, Zip, or Ellen, is--I'm guessing here--probably something like .001 percent of the populace. In fact, some of the people on here who regularly post are, IMO, at the elite athlete level. They're aren't just 'like' Lance Armstrong 'metaphorically'; they literally are at least in his cohort. As I've mentioned before, some of the regular posters here are former or current Ironmen, ultra-runners, former Olympians--people for whom triathalons and marathons are too easy. But I only know that because I know some of them personally. It's this missing info that I think could lead to a potentially dangerous misunderstanding.
However, just having people who post say "btw, I'm amazingly fit", or "I'm in pretty crappy shape, actually" wouldn't work either--since many of the amazingly fit people on here are quite modest, or think they're only 'moderately' fit. And, of course, some people think they're superfit, and aren't.
What I'd like to see, instead, is a 'fitness level quiz" we could put on here, maybe as a 'sticky', in which people could self-rate their conditioning level, coming up with a score somewhere between one and ten. The 'ten' score would be designed to be synonymous with our most fit posters. So, then when you post, you're not just "Fern" but "Fern--10"
Or "Cynthia23--3 
Right off hand, I can think of dozens of questions we could use, from the obvious : how many miles a week do you hike or run on a trail/off-trail/on a road, how many vertical feet do you gain every week; how many days a week do you hike/run--plus things like miles per week bicycled, or swam; how many times a week do you participate in other high aerobic activites like martial arts or dance; times a week doing things like weight-lifting or calisthenics or yoga--we could, I'm sure, come up with fifty questions easily, and then weigh them for points--sheer mileage and gain having the most weight in the final score, naturally.
I'm guessing that many of the casual readers of this board would be stunned at just how much aerobic work/mileage some posters do every week. It could be a reality check for some who are considering hikes they really aren't conditioned enough for. We could also have a second quiz to measure "skills", which would measure things like alpine mountaineering skills, route-finding skills, climbing skills, etc. This too would be a valuable metric.
The whole thing would be voluntary, of course, but I think it could be at least a little helpful. If someone posts a hike they did, and they are a "10" and they describe the hike as 'difficult' then I know clearly it's out of my league. If a "4" describes it as difficult, then I know it might be doable for me. This could eliminate some of the subjectivity that makes some of these TR's potentially misleading to the casual readers.
Well, that's my Big Idea. Now I can go on with my life.
