Feedback on Rank Changes

[Laura F.]

Hello everyone,

We are in the early stages of planning for a rank update. The idea is to keep the basic structure of the forum ranks the same while updating it for some recent forum and ni.com changes.  

When we enabled Kudos at the end of last year, we also disabled the average rating system.  Average rating is one of the criteria used in the forum rank.  All users' average ratings have remained constant since the Kudos implementation.  The average rating part of the rank corresponds to the left most box in your rank icon and can have the words "Trusted" or "Proven".

It is very easy to achieve the maximum level for the right box - it only requires 250 logins.  Once this level is reached, you become a "Veteran".  It could be time to either add a level to the number of logins or to use a new metric in its place.  Our frequent forum users can have thousands of logins, but I do think there could be room for another level after Veteran, much like we added "Zealous" for post count.

I don't have any plans to change the rank portion attributed to post count, including the Knight of NI rank.

In addition, we recently added a new area on our site for users to contribute - the NI Developer Zone Community. We would like to be able to highlight users that are contributors in this area. My initial thoughts are to call it out separately from the forum rank so that frequent forum users don't decrease in rank if they have never used the Developer Zone Community.  The idea would be to add something separate so that users that do actively participate in the Developer Zone Community get recognition in addition to their forum rank.

With that explanation, here are my key questions and thoughts about ranks:

1. I don't think Kudos would be a good addition to rank.  Because of the conversion from average rating to Kudos members can have Kudos numbers that differ widely even if they have about the same number of posts.  Most of this I attribute to one star rating issues that we had.
2. I also don't think solutions would be a good addition to rank.  We already have some issues with the correct reply being marked and if it were added to the rank the situation would most likely only get worse.
3. Is tagging a worthwhile activity to add to the rank formula?  The number of tags used grows each month.
4. Is the number of logins sufficient or should we add an extra level, or replace it with a different metric entirely?
5. What if we went from three boxes in the rank icon to two?

 Keep in mind that when I say early stages of planning, I mean that changes will not happen soon but I wanted to get your feedback early in the process.  Your thoughts are appreciated!

Thanks,
Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments

Message Edited by Laura F. on 03-17-2009 02:45 PM

[Ben]

I think tags and under utilized and should be encouraged, so I'd like to encourage people to do tagging. It has worked very nicely for me over the last year allowing me to quickly find threads from years ago.

Can we use the total tag count to replace the bar that used to reflect the star average?

Still trying to build the value of the community....

How about adding the post count on the Forums to the post count on the Cummunity?

Even though you don't want to add another icon at the top, I'll still ask for the ability to set our own icon and tile when we get to 20,000 posts so that Christian and Dennis have something to work toward (re: Dennis, Make the default icon for that level something terribly arrogant so that Dennis will be motivated to change it from the default. )*

Ben

* I realize that request is way low on the priority list. Does not matter I'm still asking.

[Ray.R]

Trusted or Proven were originally intended as indicators for how well someone contributed to the technical part of the forum.

I think there is still merit for using them.  I don'k know how this could effectively be measured so that it is not abused.   If left opened generaly as it was before, how does a novice user of the forum identify the technical value of the help received.  We've seen in the past that excellent solutions got low ratings or none at all.  So re-doing such a mechanism would be useless and troublesome. 

I don't have a suggestion at the moment, but can think about it.  As for dropping it and using 2 bars, then how could novice users identify the good members versus... others?  Well.. is that important?  Many people don't respect Knights..  (Let's not go there).  In that case, would iit make a difference if it was dropped?  Are we paying too much attention to that whereas we should simply focus on helping others?  

R

[Mathan]

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Ray.R wrote:

Are we paying too much attention to that whereas we should simply focus on helping others?  

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Well said JLV.

Yes Laura, it seems the present ranking system is very superb one.

Also see there is less feedback in this thread, that means nobody is interested in discussing about the new ranking system. So IMHO please let this system as is. Sorry if i said anything wrong.

Thanks,

Mathan

[altenbach]

I actually don't like the 250 login rule, because it can easily be played by hiring a student to login/logout for a while. In any case, it is quite random and reaching the ranks strongly depend on the exact personal mechanics of forum usage. 😄 I think it should be replaced by a real duration, e.g. member for 1 month, member for 1 year, etc. This will immediately eliminate any students that only come here for the short duration of a course and then never use LabVIEW again.

Activity in the developer zone community is certainly something that could be useful to promote the community area. Maybe each forum profile page shoud also have hard link the the community page of that user.

[Ray.R]

I agree with Altenbach concerning the 250 login rule.  It does not make sense and it is not based on any merit. 

If any rule should be dropped, that would be the one.

[Laura F.]

After working further on this, we have a proposal for rank changes that I'd like further feedback on:

The new ranks will be based on metrics in three areas that are combined from both the NI Discussion Forums and ni.com/community sections of our site.  The three areas would be:

1. Contributions: the number of forum posts in the NI Discussion Forums and documents created on ni.com/community [This would replace the number of forum posts which determines if you are Active, Enthusiastic, Zealous, or a Knight of NI]
2. Duration of membership: how long you have been a member of the Forums or ni.com/community, with whichever one you joined first determining your length of time [This would replace number of logins that we currently used to determine if you are a Member, Regular, or Veteran]
3. Other Activities: tags applied on the forums and ni.com/community, document edits and comments on ni.com/community [This would replace the average rating which is no longer a valid metric on the forums and determines if you are Trusted or Proven]

What are your thoughts?  I think some of these metrics go along nicely with what we have today but the "Other Activities" is certainly new.  I think some of the naming conventions will have to be tweaked, especially Trusted or Proven but right now I'd like to focus on the metrics themselves.  Are there any other categories from the Forums that you would like to factor into the ranks?

Thanks,

Laura

[RayFarmer]

So if you contribute to only one ( forums or community) does that mean you would have a lower ranking!

Although Other Activities may provide some interesting metrics I dont think its fair to lower someone ranking because they dont generate enough tags.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[Laura F.]

Hi Ray,

Thanks for the feedback!

I would definitely not make anyone's rank go down.  The community contributions (if there are any) would be added to your forum posts.  I want to keep the current levels for contribution activity (200, 2000, 5000, 10000 posts).

As for tagging and other activities - this would replace the average rating system.  These are definitely activities that not everyone will participate in so it will be a challenge to figure out how to incorporate them into the ranks.  However, I also don't see this as lowering someone's rank but it's more like a separate vector.  I'm open to ideas about this.

Regards,

Laura

[Henrik_Volkers]

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Laura F. wrote:

 [...]

The new ranks will be based on 

[...]

2. Duration of membership: how long you have been a member of the Forums or ni.com/community, with whichever one you joined first determining your length of time [This would replace number of logins that we currently used to determine if you are a Member, Regular, or Veteran]

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 Hi Laura, 

if this point will make it, I have to claim that this   was me !  

Too bad that the info-labview mailing list subscription time doesn't count...  must have been around LV3.1

What comes after veteran..... doter?

Message Edited by Henrik Volkers on 04-30-2009 03:02 PM