Forum Rank Change Proposal

[tst]

There are rare exceptions, but generally, users with blue names are NI employees and users with black names are not.

And yes, many of the people posting here are very good.

P.S. Personally, I don't care that much about the ranks. It would be better if we could get rid of them, but that would probably be detrimental to morale. The points brought up here seem reasonable - as long as the ranks reflect real metrics, they're fine.

P.P.S. To clarify - I actually feel that the usefulness of the ranks is limited. Those who don't know what they mean (see previous post) wouldn't really know how to regard them and those who do know usually don't need them.

[Intaris]

Tsunami,

I think if you'd line up everybody on the forums according to labels like "insider" or "outsider" you'd be surprised how many people are "outsiders".  I'm one personally and I know fo a couple of others who are regular valuable contributors to the forum.

If there's one thing I really appreciate about the forums is that there is no real "insider" and "outsider" grouping....

Shane.

[BenYL]

Here is the perspective of one that that asks questions but can't yet answer many. First, it is hard for outsiders to tell the relative difference in ranks, and the meaning of those "Army strip" things. Second, I find quite a few answers that are too terse, making it seem like people are posting them more for the points that anything.

These being said, this forum is great and thanks all for helping out us poor, sorry newbies!

[Laura F.]

OK, yet another question:

Do we prefer to keep the three bars (maybe reducing it to two bars) in the ranks?

Or, should we try to reduce the complexity and have less permutations of the ranks?  One way to do this that would allow us to give credit for more than just one metric is to use an algorithm to combine multiple metrics and assign a point value that is combined into a single rank structure.  A simple example: #Points = Post_Count + 0.1xTag_Count.  This way, you do not have to tag if it's not something you like to do and you still move up the ranks just fine.  The multiplying factor of 0.1 is just an example.

Thanks,

Laura

[Ben]

Maybe less bars will be better.

The multiplier of  (0.1) is on the hight side. Maybe (0.05) so that that 20 tags for one post would be closer. Concidering not all posts are valuable while all tags have some value but are jus to to easy to create.

Ben

[Cory_K]

Well, if you reduce the number of metrics, you would have to come up with a new naming convention.

Or remove the titles all together. I dont really have a preference either way, I was just noticing.

[Laura F.]

Ben - the multiplier was an example and would still have to be figured out by looking at the existing data.

Cory - we would need to change the names.  I think we would want to preserve some of what we have like "Enthusiast" and "Knight of NI".

Thanks,

Laura

[Ben]

Numbers like "Page views" and "total message read" are a good indication of how long the user has been around as well as how active.

Ben

[Ray.R]

Laura,

The multiplier suggestion / example sounds good.

R

[F._Schubert]

Aesthetically, 3 stripes look better than 2. And don't give us 4 (always odd numbers).

So I would prefer to get one of the sections split (maybe community effort -> tags, Communities and the other supportive -> posts, solutions). Yes, the 'hours login time' are no good metrcs, I think.

Felix