Sometimes, before we make a change, it's wise to just ask everyone their opinion. Then of course we ignore everyone and go ahead as planned. Just kidding… I'd like to change the names for karma levels. They don't seem to make sense. How does "very high" compare to "guru"? So here is my suggestion.
Tourist, Beginner, Adept, Advanced, Expert, Guru. And then one new level, Elder, for the tiny percentage of Wikidot users whose sites make a kind of whooshing noise as you visit them. Whoosh! You just saw something impossible. Whoosh! That was… elegant. Whoosh! How on earth? Beautiful… wow! Whoosh!
The new names may offend people who see Wikidot as a business tool. They do sound better for gamers and youngsters like me1 who treat Wikidot more as a pleasure than a chore.
So what do you think? Tell us! Better? Silly? Irrelevant? Maybe these names should be configurable on a per-site basis?
I don't know if it will make much difference. From my experience, there is usually "guru" or "not guru" as I have gathered from various posts mentioning karma.
Timothy Foster - @tfAuroratide
Auroratide.com - Go here if you're nerdy like me
And I agree with Tim. Most people only seem to distinguish between "guru" and "not quite guru yet". The idea of an extra level, Elder, is an interesting one. Would that be added manually by you, or is it also automatic? And how would it be displayed? An extra bar? 5 golden bars (as you originally wanted, I believe) ?
The names aren't really important, as they are barely used. So I'm not sure what you mean by a per-site config for the names. The names are only mentioned on the account:you page!! Everywhere else it's just a power bar.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I like the elder one.
Maybe like James' extra bar? Or maybe a gold outline one their picture, or something.
The problem with this, is that it was hard enough to become a guru. So what I suggest, is that if someone becomes an elder, then they get a free, probably low-end, pro account. Just a thought.
a extra level would be nice, because, everything before guru is pretty easy to get to, so your already up to "very-high" in like 100days or so, then you just have to go to guru and your done, so now there's a ton of guru's (80 of the watchers of this page are guru's), so a extra level would show the people who have worked so much and continue to work.
now im by no means saying its easy to become a guru, as im not even there yet with almost 2000 edits and over 500 forum post…
the names are pretty much irrelevant to the everyday use of wikidot, as no one really mentions them
My vote: it's silly and irrelevant. Didn't you already adopt some stuff about blackbelts already; where did that go? There are too many one-off ideas, I say. Fix some single idea for karma and make it central: a clear reason for its existence and at most one wikidot site. Similarly, choose some single idea for sharing stuff (templates, themes, tidbits, snippets, etc.). There's my rant.
My only problem with the karma levels is that guru implies Wikidot expert, which is not necessarily true. All it means is that you have created/edited enough pages and BSed enough in the forums to get the high ranking. I think the various levels should be labeled in terms that relate to someone's level of participation and not imply that a higher level equates to knowledge levels.
Maybe we could have a different set of criteria that measures our skills with Wikidot syntax and developing things that make Wikidot sing and dance. This could be accomplished in part through the community forums where users can give points to others for the quality of their answers and ability to help solve others' problems. I know other support-type sites use a system like this.
-Ed
Community Admin
Perhaps that extra level is the blackbelt thing.
Examples (could be better, I know):Timothy Foster - @tfAuroratide
Auroratide.com - Go here if you're nerdy like me
Hahaha, nice! Instead of visual stripes though, it might be better as just a white number so that people like James don't run out of space ;-)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
awesome idea timothy!
There is obviously an algorithm behind the karma levels that gives everyone a score based on their contributions. Why not just link from the karma level indicator to a list of gurus ranked from 1 to n based on their raw scores. It would be interesting to see who the top few are.
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
ya, maybe have a little number beside the karma showing the percent that that user is ranked up
yes, i think thats a pretty good idea, but i don't love it.
and your talking about a pretty big change there, and people don't like big changes, they like for them to happen slowly…
Actually, I don't love it either - I just threw it out there to clarify my point that karma level<>skill level. Frankly, I don't care how this shakes out. I'd rather see more time spent on changes that are way more important in my opinion (like private categories, ifuser, and virtually everything else listed on the design blog).
-Ed
Community Admin
same here, karma, works, and it works like its suppose to, spend time on the things yet to be implemented.
Well considering all the time and effort it does take to be Guru- you inevitably do learn something along the way don't you? I think that counts for something. I'm certainly no wikidot expert as the guru name would imply, but I've learned a lot from when I started out years ago with that dark, sad little power meter with no bars.
The names really- don't mean anything like mentioned elsewhere here in posts. That extra oomph/level though probably should be made for the people who really put alot of time and effort into Wikidot and it's community. I agree with the suggestion of integrating the belts in some way- though rather then 'one level' that just adds a bunch more tiers. Maybe just one extra thing for 'belt holders' so you don't have to worry about a ton of different icons/levels.
The other idea about perhaps being able to get some sort of rating based on how helpful you are in forums and comments is a good/interesting thought as well. Gotta be sure its not abused though.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.