However, in the process of doing this, I made a fascinating discovery about my forum: Activity Level Titles. What are these you ask? Well when I looked at my post in the long thread, I saw under my username the title "snail". I was rather confused (and my ego a little bruised) when I saw this. Then, I saw that under each member's name there was an animal name. From recognizing active users on the forum, I deduced that the speed of the animal corresponded with the amount of activity that group member had in the forum.
My suspicion was confirmed when I clicked on an icon next to a random user's name. Along with the animal name, I could learn how many "community points" this user had, and what their "community rank" was. With each post a member makes, they earn points. When I clicked on my own profile, I learned that I only have 10 points for my two posts in the forum, and that my rank is #6,543. Meanwhile, in this same thread there were members who had community ranks as high as #10. I was intrigued by the speed related animal titles so I found a complete listing of the animal titles and the community points required to be assigned one. It is as follows:
Title
Points
Wow, this is a very interesting discovery! So the amount of activity you are participating in your forum gives up points to move up to different animal levels. Does this include posts, responses, and any other kind of activity? I could see how using this kind of system would give those competitive users an incentive to keep up with the community to gain points to move up on the scale. I think this a smart play on the websites part, to get users to continue to participate in their community but like you I'm not sure if this is all good. I can definitely see how this could effect the new users by the established user not really giving you the time of day. They think they are too good to post on a newbies post, but it's kind of sad, because at some point they were in the same position as you when they signed up. Hopefully, someone will write back to you and give you a chance. I look forward to seeing if you continue to find any correlation between responses and status.
ReplyDeleteWhat a creative idea to give forum members animal titles that correlate to their activity in the forum. It seems like this would definitely encourage uses to be more active participants in forum discussions. I agree with Jessica, though this is a creative idea, it may cause division in the forum since established members may not want to comment on the posts of new users. I am excited to see if your activity bumps you up to the next level in animal speed.
ReplyDeleteShannon I have seen this idea in some other forums that I visit, and I think it is an interesting way of categorizing how active people are in the online universe. One person in a forum I visit has over 16,000 posts, and the creator of the forum and the guy who runs the website only has 4,000. The website has only existed for 4 years.... That means the guy has made an average of 10 posts a day (EVERY DAY!!) for four years. He would be a super falcon in the runners forum! I'm guessing he doesn't run much though :)
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