=][= Adjustments to Achievements and Ranks in Development =][=

[Brother Tyler]

Behind the scenes, the staff has been working on adjustments to the achievements and the ranks. The current structure (described here) was a "best guess" that was developed when we underwent the software upgrade a few years ago. We have identified several areas where this structure can be improved. The intent with the achievements is to encourage/reward positive behaviors, recognizing members' contributions to the community. Key changes:

• Increasing from 5 steps to 20 steps
• Flattening curves
• Adjusting goals to be more achievable
• Adjusting achievement points values
• Increasing the ranks

The current achievement steps are green-blue-bronze-silver-gold. In increasing from 5 to 20, we are adding a few colors, but are creating the additional steps by having multiple levels of each color. The green and gold badges will each have a single level. The green badge indicating to a member that the behavior is one that is recognized as an achievement and for which continued instances of that behavior will result in more badges. The gold badge is the highest badge in any progression and indicates that the member has hit that top milestone (and likely exceeded it). We are adding purple, red, and black in between the blue and bronze badges. The blue, purple, red, black, bronze, and silver badges will all have three levels, with Roman numeral I/II/III indicators. So after receiving the green badge, a member will receive the blue I badge at the second milestone, the blue II badge at the third milestone, the blue III badge at the fourth milestone, the purple I badge at the fifth milestone, and so on.

 

The current progressions are decidedly non-linear, sometimes drastically so. The modified progressions are much more linear, the curves largely being flattened. In part, this is due to making milestones more achievable. We examined how many members had earned each of the existing achievements and determined that some of the gold badge milestones were too high. A few of the behaviors are currently single-milestone, but those have been incorporated into the 20-step progressions. Previously, members were limited to a single blog, so there was only a single badge. In evaluating the blogs, however, we determined that allowing members to create multiple blogs was much more useful. Similarly, the award for creating clubs was previously limited to a single badge because we didn't want to encourage members to create useless clubs. With our awareness of how clubs can be used on the site, however, it makes sense to encourage the creation of constructive clubs, and to award achievements for that behavior. Here are some examples of a few behaviors and how they are being changed. The red line shows the current progression (along 5 steps) while the blue line shows the modified progression (along 20 steps).

 

 

Members are able to create discussion topics in the FORUM feature (obviously), but they are also able to create discussion topics in the CLUB feature (assuming the club has one or more discussion forums). As of 14 February, only 1 member had created 1,000 or more topics and 6 had created 500 or more topics.

 

 

Under the current rules [for achievements] comments/replies in all areas are counted in this progression. This includes replying in topics (obviously), but also includes comments on events, gallery images, files, downloads, blog entries, etc. As of 14 February, only 35 members had posted 10,000 or more comments/replies and 119 had posted 5,000 or more comments/replies. While we are flattening the curve, we are also breaking the comments/replies out into different progressions for different areas. So there will be a progression for comments/replies in BLOGS, another for comments/replies in the GALLERY, etc. The blue progression shown above is for comments/replies in the FORUM (where the majority of comments/replies are currently located).

 

 

As of 14 February, 30 members had uploaded 1,000 or more images and 94 members had uploaded 500 or more images. The only images that count towards this progression are those that are uploaded into the GALLERY feature. When a member directly embeds an image into content (e.g., by pasting an image or off-site URL into a post), that image (a) doesn't count towards the progression, and (b) will be automatically deleted by the system after a period of time (this is not something that we have any control over).

 

As the comment/reply progression shows, we are also creating a few new progressions (mostly breaking them out from currently consolidated progressions). This necessitated the creation of a few new designs. I also made some tweaks to create an overarching system, so everything to do with the FORUM feature shares design cues, everything to do with the ARTICLE feature shares design cues, etc. Most of the designs had to be tweaked so that we could fit the I/II/III indicator (I chose the center bottom). Also, standardized iconography for comments/replies and reviews was created. So all review achievements feature a design of five stars across the middle/bottom of the badge, above the I/II/III indicator and superimposed over the feature design (e.g., the badge for a review of an album features the five stars superimposed over the four image icon of the new album badge).

 

I spent all day yesterday working on the badges. At this point I've created the basic designs. I'm considering creating some images for the green and gold badges to fill the space that other badge colors use for the I/II/III indicator, and I may tweak a few of the images a little (I'm not satisfied with the review image). After that it will just be a matter of creating the new backgrounds (purple, red, and black) and then creating the new badges. That will take some time.

 

Under the current system, each achievement milestone is worth 1 point, and this includes the longevity achievement milestones (1 year, 5 years, and then every multiple of 5 years thereafter). With longevity achievements worth points, members can advance in rank simply by logging in without otherwise participating in the community. We also observed that it was very easy to reach higher ranks. In one example, a new member that had been here for less than a month reached the Veteran rank. That seemed counterintuitive. Under the modified system, achievements will be worth 0-4 points (unless we decide to modify that to 0-3 or 0-5). The concept is that the baseline achievements are worth 2 points at each milestone. "Importance" of achievements is based on their ease/difficulty of performing (level of effort) and their contribution to the community. Some behaviors are extremely easy, but contribute little to the community (or their contribution is reflected in other ways). For example, voting in a poll is relatively easy and the contribution is reflected in the outcome of the poll. Also, a more meaningful contribution to the poll is often posting a comment/reply to help others to explain differing viewpoints on the issue being voted upon. So voting in a poll is worth 0 points (that may change as we refine things). You'll still receive badges for voting because we want you to vote and help the community to make decisions, but voting in polls doesn't contribute to rank progression (see below). Meanwhile, a fully realized participation in the hobby involves assembling/painting miniatures and playing games with them, which is best covered in the BLOG feature. So submitting blog entries is worth the highest amount of points (whatever that ends up being, currently 4). We have only started working on the weighting of achievements, but we're trying to keep a sort of bell curve (few 0/max achievements, most somewhere in the middle).

 

The current ranks are Aspirant, Novitiate, Battle-Brother, Veteran, and Venerable Brother. We are definitely adding the Honoured Brother rank (though I've been wishy-washy about whether it should be immediately before or after Venerable Brother). We may add one other rank (Revered Brother?), though I'm not sure that's necessary. We are deliberately avoiding actual ranks (e.g., Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain), and though we've discussed lore-base steps through a Codex Chapter, we're probably going to stick with the simpler progression. Yes, we're going to stick with an Adeptus Astartes theme based on the site's mascot Chapter, the Legio, and our origins as a Space Marine discussion forum. So I need to create at least one new rank badge, and perhaps a second.

 

Only a few achievements will be considered "core" or "pacing" for the purpose of calculating ranks. Other achievements will earn points and those points will contribute towards a member's rank, but we're only using the core/pacing achievements in calculating the points required to reach each rank. In addition, we are working on notional timelines for members to reach each rank. Our current working numbers are 3 months to reach the Battle-Brother rank, 1 year to reach the Veteran rank, 4 years to reach the Honoured Brother rank (assuming that one comes next), and 7 years to reach the Venerable Brother rank. We'll then make an assessment of which milestones a member would achieve in each of the core/pacing behaviors at those points in time, assuming regular moderate participation over that span of time. The total points a member would earn at each of those points in time, then, become the points for the rank. Since different members participate in different ways, however, they may have more/less participation in those core/pacing behaviors. The other behaviors offer alternatives. In addition, members can lose achievement points as a result of disciplinary action; and having core/pacing achievements and other achievements offers a way for these members to recover rank. So while we may determine that it requires 50 points to reach the Battle-Brother rank based on the core/pacing achievements, members can earn those 50 points via the other achievements.

 

Ultimately, we want members to have flexibility. Each of us participates in the hobby in our own way, and we each participate within the community in our own way. Achievements, achievement points, and rank don't really do anything in that they don't confer authority or privileges. However, they serve as rough indicators of a member's contributions to the community over time. They don't necessarily speak to quality, which is reflected in reputation (earned from the reactions other members assign to one's content), but are simply an indicator of the quantity of one's contributions to the community. They are, as one member put it, imaginary Internet points. They are not pointless, however, as they both encourage and recognize constructive behaviors within the community.

 

To reiterate, however, this is still a work in progress and we have not made our final determinations on everything. Once we get everything done, we'll have to add the new badges, adjust all of the rules, add the new rank(s) and icon(s), and adjust the disciplinary rules (and figure out where we'll need to fairly adjust the achievement points of those members that have been subjected to these disciplinary measures). There is a lot of work that has to be done in one fell swoop, which will be time-consuming. And we may go through several iterations of the points assignments for each rank, just like last time.

[Brother Tyler]

A few more updates as we continue to work on this...

• Longevity is back in - members will receive 1 achievement point at each longevity step (1 year, 5 years, and every 5 years thereafter).
• The current top rank is "Venerable Brother" and that will soon be changed to "Honoured Brother." Once we make the changes, there will be two ranks above Honoured Brother - Venerable Brother and Ancient Brother. Why change "Venerable Brother" to "Honoured Brother" and then create a new Venerable Brother rank? Math. If we don't do that, many of you will think that you're being "demoted" which isn't what's happening. I spent over 8 hours yesterday and a few hours today analyzing this (and now my head hurts). And "Revered Brother" sounded arrogant, so it has been changed to "Ancient Brother" since that sounds a bit less smug.
• We're looking at ways to offset the great crash that took place in 2014. A ton of content was lost, meaning many members' achievements don't reflect that lost content. The amount of content varies from member to member, however, so we're going to look at a reasonable number of achievement points (along with a spiffy badge). It will be something along the lines of a "Great Crash Survivor" achievement. I'm looking for a way to have it awarded automatically so that we don't have to go through a database of over 50,000 members to figure out who gets it and have to manually award all of those members.
• We're also looking at ways to offset our now-abandoned policy of deleting content after it became obsolete. This was something that we did to "clean up" periodically when the site was first created during the ezBoard days, and we continued that practice (albeit sporadically) up through the software update/server migration in 2022. At that time, however, we realized that deleting content screwed members out of achievements. For example, many members' post counts went down (some of us lost over 10,000 posts), so we have adjusted that policy so that no content is removed (minus content that isn't appropriate to the site, and that will get you disciplined). Since content generally wasn't deleted unless it was over 1 year old, we're looking at a way to give members who joined prior to May 2021 a few points. Again, I'm looking for a way to have it awarded automatically to avoid the pain of manually awarding a ton of members. This is also intended to offset the fact that we once had blogs, but removed that feature and all associated content (my original blog was lost ). Naturally, the loss of the old blogs feature doesn't affect a whole lot of people, but there were quite a few of us that had blogs way back when (and it's great to see them back).
• The points values for achievements have been adjusted to 0-3 (vice 0-4). The swing up to 4 points created too large of a gap, especially since one of the core features is also a new feature and many members have yet to leverage it (BLOGS). This adjustment makes it easier for members to make up for points in one area by contributing content in other areas.
• Finally, more work is taking place to smooth some of the progressions. The initial progressions sounded fine "in my head," but looked bad once I saw them visually. For example, comments/replies (see graphic in post above) might be adjusted with the top end remaining the same, but the middle values raising slightly to get a less dramatic curve. All in all, the goal is to establish reasonable and achievable progressions.

For what it's worth, the core features of the community are the FORUMS, the GALLERY, and the BLOGS. Achievements/behaviors in these areas drive the requirements to reach each rank. So creating topics, replying in discussions, creating blogs/blog entries, commenting on members' blog entries, creating albums, and uploading images set the pace. Members can easily earn points in many other areas, however, so there's no requirement whatsoever to use all of the core features. Things like creating events in the CALENDAR, submitting ARTICLES, creating CLUBS, and uploading files in the DOWNLOADS are great and will earn points, too. The existing topic describing the achievements and ranks will be updated to include all of the relevant information. At this point, it's too soon to describe what things will look like since this is still a work in progress and things may change.