Community Migration: Ranks, Points, and Badges

[PhoneBoy]

As I mentioned previously, we are changing the community platform from Jive to Lithium.

While many changes will naturally occur as a result from the underlying platform changing, we are also taking the opportunity to reexamine many things we've been doing and seeing where we can improve.

Ranks and Points

One area that will change is the concept of "ranking" within the community.

The way Jive handles this is based on points.
Each activity you performed in the community translated to a certain number of points.
Someone could also "gift" you points by giving you an award.
Once you achieved a certain number of points, your "level" increased.

We largely left the settings at their defaults, both the points awarded and the names of the levels themselves.
As such, everyone had boring titles like "Level 2."

In Lithium, ranks are determined through a formula based on various activities you undertake in the community, others giving your content kudos, and a few other criteria.

Ranks can also be role-based, meaning if you have a specific role in Lithium, you will be given a specific rank.
Likewise, you can be granted specific permissions once you've achieved a certain rank.

What does this mean? Your point totals in our Jive community will not migrate to Lithium.

However, many of the activities you performed in Jive will be migrated to Lithium.

This will result in a rank on the new community that might differ from your current "Level."

The rank names will not be called Level X, but will be based on precious stones and metals for active members.

Members who are "passive" (read but do not post) will have a separate ranking tier.

Employees may also have a separate ranking tier--still to be determined.

Admins and moderators, as well as a few others, will have a role-based rank.

Badges

One of the areas you can expect significant changes in the migration is badges.

Jive had a couple of types of badges:

• Mission Badges (certain activities had to be completed in the community to achieve the badge)
• Badges given from one person to another that included a gift of "points"

We largely left these settings at their default values in Jive.

However, Lithium has no default badges.

There is also no concept of "user-granted" badges.

Unfortunately, this means you will lose all your badges in the migration.

However, we have defined some shiny new ones and you will gain them based on your previous and future activities.

We do plan to add others as well over time.