Community ranks now have level indicators

[BeverlyBrown]

To give more insight into community ranks, level indicators now accompany rank icons displayed by your screen names on your profile and wherever you post.

The icons – many named for gemstones, from calcite to diamond – debuted last year as part of a refresh of communities.sas.com, giving you a window into a lifelong hobby of SAS CEO Jim Goodnight.

Some of you love rocking (ha ha) the new ranks. Others not so much. Oh well. But one critique stuck with us: you want more transparency into each rank’s meaning. Like:

• Does the reply from an Explorer carry as much weight as, say, that Onyx member’s advice?
• What did I do to advance to Calcite?
• How do you get to be a Diamond?

Let’s clear up some of that.

Your level and what it means

Alongside your community posts and when someone hovers over your community ID, your profile card now displays a number that corresponds with your rank. Ranks fall between New User (someone who just joined) and Diamond, the highest rung on our ranking ladder aside from Super User and PROC Star.

You level up according to your tenure as a member, your activity on the site and other members’ reactions to your posts. See the chart below for more detail.

Rank levels in the SAS Communities

Your thoughts, please

Tenure as a community member and high-value actions, like solving topics and creating articles, and encouraging others by “liking” posts  all count toward unlocking the next level.

While some communities tell you explicitly how to advance from one rank to the next, we as yet have no such plans. Would you want a feature that shows the distance between your current rank, the next level and what you need to do to get there? Or nah? Have you seen a great example of this sort of thing? Tell us in the comments.

As always, thank you for being a part of the SAS Support Communities!

[Quentin]

Thank you for this enhancement!

In terms of other sites that let you know how far you have to go for next rank, I think stack overflow goes pretty far in the whole gamification of rep thing.  So you know exactly how many points you have to earn for the next rank / privilege.  And you can make plots of your rep over time, etc etc.

But I don't think I would necessarily want that sort of stuff here.  I'm happy to accept that there is some mystery behind what moves people up in rank, and also some magic behind surprising badges.

Since I was one of those who felt dumb as a rock trying to understand the gemological rankings, I appreciate that you've added the numeric level!

[BeverlyBrown]

@Quentin, thank you for that feedback! At the time we rolled out the rock ranks, we debated the usefulness of those microscopic dots under the mineral icons. They're reeeeally tiny, and though they imply advancement, they aren't all that helpful. @ChrisNZ has a suggestion we like: replace the dots with stars...bronze for the first tier of minerals, silver for the next two, gold for the upper tier.

[ChrisNZ]

Maybe 3 groups of 5 minerals then, to once again keep a very familiar format: 1 to 5 bronze stars, then 1 to 5 silver stars and then gold stars. Also, where's the sapphire?

[BeverlyBrown]

Hi @ChrisNZ, just checked. Dr. Goodnight doesn't have any sapphire in his collection. But there are plenty of other varieties from which to choose.

[ChrisNZ]

@BeverlyBrown Perfect! You know what to get him for his birthday! 🙂

[PaigeMiller]

Do the rankings and advancement to the next rank depend (at least partially) on answering questions? Is a user who never answers questions at all, but asks 500 questions, treated the same as someone who has answered 500 questions?

[ChrisHemedinger]

@PaigeMiller No. While asking questions is a valuable way to engage the community, solving questions and contributing articles are important behaviors that are required for certain rank levels.

[raycewiggins]

In terms of the icons for the ranks I actually don't think that the dots underneath are necessary. To me, the dots imply that there are sub levels to each tier, which doesn't seem to be the case. And therefore they are a little redundant. I prefer to just have the icons be just the gemstones and the community members can either discover the meaning of each one as they rank up, or they can simply reference a post like this where they can see them all laid out.

On the gamification side of things, I think a tier progress indicator of some kind would help to motivate community members to contribute more by seeing how close they are to the next rank. Additionally, I think it would be helpful have a more explicit way of showing how rewards correlate to point amounts. One of the best gamified learning sites I've seen is Khan Academy, and they have a nice way of showing the breakdown of how points are earned each time a lesson is completed. So maybe something similar to that would be nice?

[BeverlyBrown]

Hi @raycewiggins, thank you for this feedback and recommending Khan's site. Will check that out. 

[fja]

Hello Beverly!

First off thank you for sharing this piece of information. In response to your question about the sensibility of a "distance to next rank" indicator I would like to utter my doubts. Wouldn't such an indicator result in people to overdo posting and liking just to gain the next level? I personally would like to see that measure being kept secret as I "guess" that this guides people to deliver quality focused contributions and highlighting such postings with likes.

Having said this I would like to add that the disclosure of the required tenure could be helpful to get an idea of the level groups. This could render a motivation for regular participation.

Just my 2ct

Regards

Fja

[himself]

Thanks for sharing this, Its now time to hit Diamond