Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

On this forum we have a number of member "levels" that you hit when you reach a certain number of posts: Junior Member, Member, and Senior Member. Unfortunately, these titles they often imply that their owners have a certain status in the community that doesn't necessarily reflect that owner's real status within the community (in the case of a prolific troll, or an individual that likes to spam help requests, etc.). This issue has come up often enough (and out of left field often enough) that I believe it should be addressed as part of the Talk migration.

As such, I'd like to make this a contest of sorts to come up with the best set of replacement levels. Any proposed list should be appropriate (not your top-5 profanities, qwerty12 :p), non-threatening (we don't want to repeat the problem with "Senior Member" we have now), and fun. The numbers 1-5 in Finnish would be a good example (Yksi, Kaksi, Kolme, Neljä, Viisi). Let's try to shoot for at least 5 levels, but feel free to add more if you want (though I'm not clear on exactly how the vBulletin system works).

Once we get a decent number of proposals, then I suppose we can move them into a poll. We'll also need to decide on the post value for each level. I figure the top level should be somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 posts (100 is appropriate for a new forum, but not a 4-year-old one).

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

The number of posts (which decides the current level) doesn't, as we know, tell anything about the quality of posts, so why not change it from 'Senior Member' (which I think is reached after just a 100 posts or so) to 'Prolific Poster' or something.. ;)

Yours,
Senior Member #4974

EDIT: Some level suggestions: 1-x: visitor x-50: hanging around 50-300: regular 300-1000: prolific poster: 1000->: needs a life :p

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

Is there no way to base a level off of the Thanks count? presumably a high thanks count is more likely to equate to an active and helpful member of the community than merely a high post count.

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

Yes, this was an option I was considering, but I think it'd require some work on the plugin to make it happen. Probably not worth it. The maemo.org karma is a "good enough" reward for getting Thanks!. The levels should be more for fun than anything else, and having them involve no more work than spamming as much as you can manage seem appropriate. ;)

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

First ten posts: "New member".

After that: "Member".

No need for the patronising "Junior member" or pompous "Senior member".

Oh, and if you want to make the forum more welcoming to newcomers, how about this: the first person to respond to a new member's first post can start by saying "Welcome to the forum". If a few people start to do that, it should catch on.

Regards,
Roger

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

I fully agree!

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

Yes, but that's no fun. We still want the rankings, we just don't want them to imply anything other than they should.

Not really relevant to this thread, but feel free to get it started. . . .

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

What do you want the rankings to imply? I think I understand that you want them to imply only post count. What is the fun you are seeking?

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

Maybe a combination of New Member -> Member in Finnish instead? I see the usefulness of New Member versus Member in English, I see the fun of Finnish titles, and I see the usefulness of karma giving one a new title as member. Maybe we can combine it all-in-one:

1) In Finnish
2) Import aspect being New Member versus Member (in Finnish?)
3) After that its Karma and fun, in Finnish.

Re: Improving Member Levels: Less Threatening, More Fun
 

In an integrated talk.maemo.org the karma points could be perhaps made more visible. It might give a hint when put next to the post count and the thanks given & received.