The mythical but arbitrary dan barrier

[MysteryFTG]

Which is why I hold myself to the standard of being 1 Dan in the hardest ranked systems or not be considered a Dan at all. I'm already Dan in my country and certain servers but I'm not convinced I am yet. I still have kyuu accounts in other servers (though I havent really made the effort to really push for Dan in those) and take it that if I'm not naturally getting to Dan in the other servers than I'm not a real Dan yet.

Interesting, that's basically what I wanted to write on this matter.
Of course, I just started playing Go, but ranks seem to be so different on the servers that I wouldn't feel like calling myself shodan if it is just on the server where it's the easiest to reach.
Right now I'm still gaining ranks very fast and I'm still exploring the different servers. But once everything has stabilized a bit, I'm inclined to use the lowest rank across all servers. Assuming I'm playing regularly there.

[gowan]

Years ago it was said that amateur 1d corresponds to having some understanding of the fundamentals. Understanding fundamentals, not mastery. In this sense, 1d would indeed be going from pre-school to elementary school. That transition is still vague, of course. Myself I consider it as meaning that one can now really begin to learn. Even great pros feel they are still learning. Isaac Newton compared himself to a child playing on the beach with pebbles while in front is an ocean that is not understood. At his prime as a player Cho Chikun made a statement of this kind about his own understanding of go.

[Tryss]

Note that if you really want to wait to be a 1d in every sytem before calling yourself "1 dan", you'll need to be at pro strength before doing so. In the korean traditional system, a 1 kyu (1 gup in korean) is far stronger than 1 dan in most systems (some say 4-5 dan).