You are correct, I removed my birthdate and number of dives, specifically for the reason above. I was tired of people treating my advice based on my age and experience. As I said above, if the advice is sound, the age or experience of the person giving advice shouldn't matter. A friend of mine has a nice quote regarding this--
"No matter the experience we can all learn, and no matter the experience we can all teach."
I was trained in a university scuba program two years ago and have been volunteering with that program ever since. If anyone cares, I count for ratios (but I'm not an instructor) and that's all I'll say on that.
The people from whom I am still training are of the caliber of Mike and Thal...my current instructor has 40+ years of experience teaching and cave diving...You'd be surprised how much you can learn from just watching an experienced teacher do their thing. Working with classes that are a semester long, you tend to learn a lot.
Yes, my first post in this thread was not advice, it was a question meant to get the OP thinking--are they truly experienced enough to be an OW instructor? I know I'm not that experienced yet (and won't be for a loooong time), but you don't have to be hugely experienced to recognize 'too far too fast' syndrome.