I strongly agree. This is more objective when it comes to dev stage upgrade, we may need to look into this direction as well
I often notice that when an upgrade proposal is made, most of the respondents if not ALL will throw flowers to the geek even when they may not know much about the individuals technical skill advancement simply because community contributors are spread around different squads and so one may not know the progress of others in squads that he or she is not actively involved.
From the time have been in the community have never seen a public rejection on an upgrade proposal though I think there could be members in the community who may not consent with the proposal but because of privacy they just ignore making the response on the post.
IMO upgrade proposal is more realistic when its raised by a dev/3 or higher of the squad members working with the geek than someone else who has not been tracking the geek’s progress. This does not override the second option of someone initiating the proposal him/herself. For me I feel rewarding for someone else to recognize that my skill set does not align with my dev stage and he/she initiate the proposal to the stage the skill set aligns.
Though our @dev stages follow a pattern of @dev/null → @dev/1 → @dev/2 → @dev/3 → @dev/4 → @dev/5 But I realized that this may not be true to some geeks. Because one may not have been recognized for upgrade proposal since there might not be community developer meetings specifically for this and as time goes by the geek advances his/her skill set to that higher than the dev level next to him/her. Such advancement could also be looked into than just following the sequence dev pattern. I have seen such of this kind with @ibacher’s upgrade before he advanced to a Guru level.
Following upgrade episode very well in our community, have discovered that its one of the silent motivating factor to our contributors and as well encourages new members to strife to advance in their skill set.