From the beginning, a primary goal of building the NewsCloud community has been to empower it with influence over the way the site itself operates. Today, I'm introducing an experimental scoring system which rewards more active NewsCloud users with more influence in our community.
Initially, I've programmed NewsCloud to rank members based on their levels of participation as well as performance as judged by other members (through responses to posted stories and comments). From these rankings, NewsCloud assigns each member a user level e.g. Platinum (high), Gold, Silver, Bronze, Contributor and Reader (beginner). The higher your user level, the more voting power you have to determine which stories appear on the front page at NewsCloud. Rankings will be re-calculated regularly. If your participation increases, expect to see your user level grow over time. By visiting your account page, you can see a complete breakdown of the factors we're measuring and how you rank against the overall community.
The ranking system not only rewards you for voting and posting stories and comments but it also rewards you when stories you post generate discussions or when other readers rate your comments highly. The rankings also reward you for inviting new members to our community - especially so when they join. It also assesses your involvement over the past 30 days as well as the past six months.
I will continue to experiment and tweak the measurement system over time to produce better and better results. If you have questions or feedback, please email me at jeff@newscloud.com. Please also let me know if you encounter any problems with the new rankings or experience problems voting.
Thank you for your continued support!
You can view your account score here. Here is an example breakdown below:
Technorati Tags: member levels, user scoring, ranking
