The new ranks are here! The new ranks are here!

[JaneL]

Paraphrasing Steve Martin from the movie The Jerk, the ranks are here!

OK, you've probably already noticed that there was something different since the last time you checked in, but we needed to make an official announcement. 

We've implemented the new rank progression to inject a bit of fun with the computer component themes, but more importantly to improve the ability for members to progress up the ranks and to recognize and reward different ways of participating in the community.  That's the long way of saying we've added a lot more ranks and we've changed how you get to the next level.

How do you move through the ranks?

We used to just count how many times you've visited and posted and how long you stayed.  We thought that was boring and missed an opportunity to give forum members credit for all their great participation in the forum.

What goes into the hopper now?  A lot more to reflect what you're actually doing while you're in the forum.  For the beginner ranks, we'll still give you credit for the same things we did before, but you'll also get credit for giving out kudos, getting kudos, providing answers that get marked as solutions, taking time to accept messages that answer your questions as the accepted solution, and tagging messages with relevant tags.  As you move up the ranks and become more knowledgeable and gain confidence in helping others, just logging in becomes less important and the other types of participation become more important.  We've tried to come up with a good mix to encourage and reward both active participation (posting messages, answering questions, writing FAQs, running polls, etc) and passive participation (giving out kudos, tagging, marking messages as accepted solutions, etc).


What's in it for you?

In the near future, we'll be implementing new social networking functions including functionality that allow empowered forum members to see and interact with related discussions on twitter, answering tweets directly, bringing them in and starting forum discussions, or tweeting out existing and valuable forum discussions.

A community driven knowledge base will soon be available.  Published articles will be available to all, and members, according to their tenure and rank in the community will be able to nominate discussions to become articles, start new articles on their own, and help edit and revise drafts and some existing articles to make them even more valuable to the community.   We'll share additional updates on this as we get closer to launch.

The new ranks and associated permissions are an important foundational step to enabling these two new features, and creating new ways for members to help build the community.  Other features or special access may also be added in the future.

So, what are the new ranks, and what are the criteria to get them?

Ahh, that's a surprise that will be unveiled as we go along and members start rising through the new ranks.  You can already see some of the new ranks showing up now, so put your heads together and let the guessing begin!

[Maliha]

LOL, I love the new ranks.

Spoiler

Blue Screen Again, What's Dos? Ctrl-Alt-Del, Serial Port,

and the list goes on.

The idea is quite ingenious in my opinion. Thanks for coming up with it.

[Mark_Lenovo]

Maliha,

I'm glad you like these!  We gave them quite a bit of thought and I think they are certainly fun and thematic.   

Perhaps more importantly, there are exciting new features for the community that will be arriving soon, and these new ranks will help enable members to begin participating in new ways.

Jane did a lot of the hard work in getting these set up in the system and certainly deserves a big pat on the back.

Mark

[zoltanthegypsy]

I've got to remember to have the 2nd cup of joe before hitting the forum.  Just about hit POST on an "AIEEE someone has hacked the forum!!!!" post before I spotted the "New User Ranks" announcement.

You might consider doing that announcement in flashing red and maybe about 4x the size...

Funny.  But scary.

Bill

[MrPeter1985]

Still a Serial Port. LOL!

[amace]

ooo token ring

[JaneL]

See, now, you may be a serial port or token ring today, but if you two (and everyone else) just keeps on posting solutions to questions, giving out kudos to people who deserve them, tagging messages so we can find things, you just never know what you might be next!  ;-)

Jane

[MrPeter1985]

I'm HiDef now! lol gotta lov da ranks.

[MrPeter1985]

Token Rings - Token Rings, Come and Get EM! If you need em I've got em!

[Mark_Lenovo]

Fresh hot Token Rings!... Get ur Token Rings...Crispy golden, fried Token Rings...

That's great! 

Glad to see you are enjoying the new ranks!

Mark