New Trophies & Themes

[support]

Over the next week a few changes will be made to the site. I wanted to make mention of these changes here before you start seeing them so you are aware of what is going on.

The first change will be that you will start receiving alerts for new trophies you have been awarded. The trophies will come with points that will affect your user title on the site in the future. For the most part, your user title shouldn't change based on these changes, but if it does, remember, everyone else will have had similar changes so your position relative to others should remain roughly the same.

The reason for the change is so we can attribute user title to more than simply your post count. You will receive trophies for different post count milestones still, but also post reaction milestones, length of time a member and other exciting criteria that are just around the corner.

The other change you will notice is two new themes added to the style chooser. We currently have a light theme as default, but soon that will be joined by a dark theme (basically inverted colours – some might use this at night in dark environments), and something in between.

 

[support]

Most of the new trophies are now live. When you first log in you may get a bunch of notifications alerting you to the trophies being awarded, but you don't need to view each trophy to dismiss them.

 

[Danger]

I'm curious as to others' opinions of this new trophy thing. The very nature of 'trophy' suggests competition, something I wasn't aware AFF was doing. It would seem AFF is now less about constructive engagement - asking questions, offering feedback, seeking advice - and more about who can rack up the highest tally on the leader board.

Respectfully, I think it's a negative move that detracts from the purpose of the website.

 

[TheRealTMA]

I'm curious as to others' opinions of this new trophy thing. The very nature of 'trophy' suggests competition, something I wasn't aware AFF was doing. It would seem AFF is now less about constructive engagement - asking questions, offering feedback, seeking advice - and more about who can rack up the highest tally on the leader board.

Respectfully, I think it's a negative move that detracts from the purpose of the website.

Seems we are all just graduating from kindergarten. The new system seems quite “pointless“ to me.

 

[admin]

I'm curious as to others' opinions of this new trophy thing. The very nature of 'trophy' suggests competition, something I wasn't aware AFF was doing. It would seem AFF is now less about constructive engagement - asking questions, offering feedback, seeking advice - and more about who can rack up the highest tally on the leader board.

Respectfully, I think it's a negative move that detracts from the purpose of the website.

Let's not place too much importance on the word "trophy". It's a word Xenforo (our forum software) uses for marking milestones in community engagement. We assign the values and criteria for these milestones. Rest assured that the values and criteria we assign is all about creating constructive engagement. This will be more apparent after we do the upgrade which is planned for next week.

 

[support]

I'm curious as to others' opinions of this new trophy thing. The very nature of 'trophy' suggests competition, something I wasn't aware AFF was doing. It would seem AFF is now less about constructive engagement - asking questions, offering feedback, seeking advice - and more about who can rack up the highest tally on the leader board.

Respectfully, I think it's a negative move that detracts from the purpose of the website.

You raise a very good point, and as @Admin notes, the word "trophy" is merely what Xenforo calls the feature.

Currently – or perhaps more accurately, until recently – the user title system was based off one metric, your post count. We have attempted to curtail post count significance through the years by not counting posts in the old playground, for example, suggesting that such discussion was off-topic so it shouldn't count. Lately, the lines between what is considered on- and off-topic have blurred a little as we have changed the forum structure to include wine discussion, home, technology and sport discussion, and some others too. AFF has become more than just the place to discuss the latest frequent flyer program changes, becoming a greater community in the process. This has the effect of having more posts created that were previously considered off-topic and therefore members rising through the user titles (if they even mean anything to them – as they do not offer extra benefits).

To highlight, or perhaps more accurately, to better distinguish members who have put in the hard yards or answered the tricky questions, we are in the process of changing from a purely post count driven system, to one that encompasses a range of attributes that will give a more honest view of membership to AFF.

Take for example the seldom-posting user who reads every day and has been a member since AFF wasn't even a bulletin board. There are a few of these members. Currently they may be looked at as inexperienced or unknowledgeable due to a low post count, that may still list them as a "newbie" despite being far from that. Under the new "trophies" they'll have earned 5 points every year for the first 5 years of membership, followed by 10 points on their tenth anniversary, 15 points on their fifteenth and soon, they'll pick up another 20 points. They're not a newbie, not by a long shot, but they might have fewer than 10 posts.

You could say that user titles are not important though, but for some they are, and they are the current system that has been in place for over a decade, where a post count is equal to a rank. All the changes will be doing is providing more qualifying criteria to members, because we all interact differently with this site. I have seen members with more reactions than posts by a factor of 4, and the reverse is true too. If a member is receiving 4 reactions for every post, they're probably engaging really well and should be rewarded for that. On that note though, I can hear you say, how will be stop gaming of the system, and the answer is that we can do the same for false reactions as we currently do for post padding – either merge the posts or delete the reactions. We rely on reports to help identify problems, so if you think something untoward is going on, please highlight it for us to investigate.

As you may or may not know, you can already "view the leaderboard" for posts and reactions. So in this sense, nothing is changing. If you're not interested in who is leading, don't look. It matters not at the end of the day, as I mentioned before, there are no extra benefits to be had.

Regarding engagement, trophies also serve to reinforce engagement on the site. Obviously, the other day when you got a slew of them for essentially logging on, that wasn't helpful, but when you attain another 212 reactions from your fellow AFF members, you're going to hit 2500 reactions; this will trigger a trophy and naturally an alert. Right now the alert has a pretty generic message, but we may go through and personalise them a little more to give you some warm fuzzies as we thank you for participating in AFF and posting content that has had positive reactions 2500 times. Previously, you wouldn't be alerted to this feat.

The guiding principle behind the trophies is to alert a user to a milestone and thank them for making AFF what it is. What qualifies as a milestone can vary, and there's even one for having an avatar... which you might be surprised about but isn't all that common outside of really active members. We want members to personalise their account, to engage, to make posts, to receive likes, to a... nearly let the cat out of the bag there, all will be revealed next week.

 

[support]

Below are examples of current trophies, with points awarded gradually increasing as the milestone increases in significance. There will be others coming that should help bring user engagement in particular to a whole new level (post to be updated at that time).

Length of Membership

• 1 Year
• 2 Years
• 3 Years
• 4 Years
• 5 Years
• 10 Years
• 15 Years
• 20 Years
• 25 Years... and so forth

Posts Made

• 1 post
• 10 posts
• 50 posts
• 100 posts
• 500 posts
• 1000 posts
• 2500 posts
• 5000 posts
• 10000 posts
• 15000 posts
• 20000 posts
• 25000 posts... and so forth

Reactions Received

• 1 reaction
• 10 reactions
• 50 reactions
• 100 reactions
• 500 reactions
• 1000 reactions
• 2500 reactions
• 5000 reactions
• 10000 reactions
• 15000 reactions
• 20000 reactions
• 25000 reactions... and so forth

Miscellaneous

• Uploaded an avatar

 

[VPS]

It is interesting because we do have some very prolific posters and some who post the same comments in different threads and then repeat them in the same thread. Also - it's interesting the number of posts made on the COVID threads that I suspect those people wouldn't have contributed to some of the other travel threads. I don't care about numbers or trophies, I just want to get back to reading TR and getting jealous and adding more places to my google maps list of places I want to go.

 

[Daver6]

A useful metric would be a signal to noise ratio value. A simple version would be sum of reactions divided by number of posts. I think this would give a good guide to how useful other forum members find a member's post to be.

 

[AIRwin]

It is interesting because we do have some very prolific posters and some who post the same comments in different threads and then repeat them in the same thread.

Guilty as charged!

 

[VPS]

Guilty as charged!

You didn't even appear on my radar - sorry

 

[moa999]

A useful metric would be a signal to noise ratio value.

Think there is an element of what can/can't be done easily within the base forum software (this forum is close to stock which I think is a good thing). We've seen some features like Wikis come and go as a result.

Unless you design your own forum software (like Whirlpool) you are somewhat beholden to the software.

And yeh.... I'd like to see some more trip reports. Albeit I must say I've been getting more out of YouTube reports over the last few years than classic forum reports.

 

[support]

A useful metric would be a signal to noise ratio value. A simple version would be sum of reactions divided by number of posts. I think this would give a good guide to how useful other forum members find a member's post to be.

This metric is possible, but there’s a fairly significant catch – trophies can only be awarded once and not taken away. Thus, your signal to noise ratio might start out great but over time diminish, as a result, you’d receive the trophy and points initially, but wouldn’t lose them over time and would then be re-awarded them at the appropriate point. This is a deficiency in the forum software we cannot correct – the developers would need to.

 

[Daver6]

This metric is possible, but there’s a fairly significant catch – trophies can only be awarded once and not taken away. Thus, your signal to noise ratio might start out great but over time diminish, as a result, you’d receive the trophy and points initially, but wouldn’t lose them over time and would then be re-awarded them at the appropriate point. This is a deficiency in the forum software we cannot correct – the developers would need to.

Would it be possible to just show it as a value? Like an extra field like the QF and VA FF status? So not trophy related but simply a number that would constantly fluctuate?

 

[RooFlyer]

This metric is possible, but there’s a fairly significant catch – trophies can only be awarded once and not taken away. Thus, your signal to noise ratio might start out great but over time diminish, as a result, you’d receive the trophy and points initially, but wouldn’t lose them over time and would then be re-awarded them at the appropriate point. This is a deficiency in the forum software we cannot correct – the developers would need to.

That's assuming the 'trophy points' value is used. Could alternatively (and I think better) use the 'reaction score' which isn't in the left sidebar, but is found if we click on anyone's 'name'. Reactions of course include reactions as 'disapprovals', but I reckon they are a very small minority of reactions for anyone. 'Reactions given' doesn't seem to be listed, but have they been counted in the background? Also a good metric for site interaction.

 

[support]

Would it be possible to just show it as a value? Like an extra field like the QF and VA FF status? So not trophy related but simply a number that would constantly fluctuate?

I do not believe the forum software allows for this as core functionality and we are aiming to simplify, not complicate, the add ons we use. I do think it would be a great metric to display though.

That's assuming the 'trophy points' value is used. Could alternatively (and I think better) use the 'reaction score' which isn't in the left sidebar, but is found if we click on anyone's 'name'. Reactions of course include reactions as 'disapprovals', but I reckon they are a very small minority of reactions for anyone. 'Reactions given' doesn't seem to be listed, but have they been counted in the background? Also a good metric for site interaction.

We can choose which fields to display on the left, but a ratio of reactions to post only exists in the trophy system. Can’t make it work in any other way. Limitation, or rather design, of the forum software. You may need to explain your idea more.

When the trophy system is fully operational we shall either list all values in the left (including posts and reactions) or only points (which takes into account a range of attributes.

 

[RooFlyer]

We can choose which fields to display on the left, but a ratio of reactions to post only exists in the trophy system. Can’t make it work in any other way. Limitation, or rather design, of the forum software. You may need to explain your idea more.

Sorry, just a bit of a thought bubble on my part. I was just expanding on daver6's concept of establishing a value to measure usefulness eek: ) or, maybe better, 'engagement'. The ratio of 'reactions' to posts to me would seem a better measure than that of 'trophy points' to posts, IF anyone wanted to go down that path; I guess it would be a manual calc.

 

[Flashback]

Sorry, just a bit of a thought bubble on my part. I was just expanding on daver6's concept of establishing a value to measure usefulness eek: ) or, maybe better, 'engagement'. The ratio of 'reactions' to posts to me would seem a better measure than that of 'trophy points' to posts, IF anyone wanted to go down that path; I guess it would be a manual calc.

But it would also need to count based on posts made since reactions came into play, some of the older members will have quite a few posts prior to that which would not have been reacted to for example. Nothing is as simple as it seems

 

[support]

The ratio of 'reactions' to posts to me would seem a better measure than that of 'trophy points' to posts, IF anyone wanted to go down that path; I guess it would be a manual calc.

There must have been a crossing of wires, that IS the metric that is available to us. From that metric, we can then create a trophy and award points. What we can't do is publicly display that information – I don't believe.

But it would also need to count based on posts made since reactions came into play, some of the older members will have quite a few posts prior to that which would not have been reacted to for example. Nothing is as simple as it seems

Anyone can go back and react to something in the past. I know of a member who has been active since before you registered who has more reactions than posts, in the thousands! So I don't think a lack of reactions these days holds much weight, they have been embraced quickly and completely – side note that reactions also encompassed the old likes system.

 

[RooFlyer]

There must have been a crossing of wires, that IS the metric that is available to us.

My bad - old expression - put brain in gear before posting