Beloved Grand Eagle (aka User Titles)

Hi, folks,

Yesterday, @PamD and I started changing the way that trophies had been set up on our site. We've changed them a bit and there will probably be a couple more changes coming, so I wanted to give people a heads up.

Basically how this works is that as people pass various milestones in their forum usage, they get "trophies." For example, as your account has made more posts, received more "likes" for the posts, or been around longer, you get a little alert in the upper right hand corner of the page. As you get more trophies, your "user title," the text below your username on the right, changes. It's built into the software and I don't think we could remove it if we wanted to. Plus, it's a nice way to get newcomers oriented regarding who they are discussing with.

We used to have user titles like "New Member" and "TMS Guru." However, I think that these led to some confusion and @Mala suggested that the term "guru" was a term of high respect and shouldn't be used lightly, so I've wanted to change the user titles for, literally, years.

Well, we finally got around to it last night. It just took a while to find the time to initiate the process. Having PamD's help as someone to discuss ideas with really helped.

Basically, there are a number of "user titles" for people who are relatively new to the forum. Once you've been around for a while, you become a "Well Known Member." Finally, if you've been around forever and have made more than a thousand posts and received at least 500 likes, you become a "Beloved Grand Eagle."

Why Beloved Grand Eagle? Well, because it made us laugh and it felt like a lighthearted way to recognize the extraordinary contributions of, so far, 7 individuals.

My take on the whole thing is that while on some level we don't take these things too seriously, on another level we do. When you've been a member of a community like this for a very long time, little symbolic gestures like this can actually take on a significant meaning. Plus, the contributions that some long-time members have made are pretty stunning and deserve some recognition.

You can see the list of the 100 members with the most "trophy points" here:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/members/?type=points

And the list of Trophies here:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/help/trophies

 

Well, Beloved Grand Eagle, @Ellen, I'm glad you like it.

 

It's a thought.... Of course, the Flintstones did grab that one first...