How does user rank work exactly?

[VelvetSoul]

I've noticed that every user has a rank such as Newbie, Casual Poster, Jr. Member, etc. As I understand it Full Member is when you're allowed to interact with certain features of the forum such as gifts (which I love, but feel really underused; which I want to fix!) I noticed my rank went from Newbie to Casual Poster recently, but I'm unable to discern why or how.

I scoured the wiki in hopes of finding some kind of answer for this, since I recently realized we had a forum wiki and thought that might have an answer for me. However I couldn't find anything there about it, now I will admit I tend to be pretty blind when it comes to this sort of thing. A lot of times something is looking me right in the face and I'm unable to figure out what it means. That being said I am very interested in this as I wish to unlock more features to interact with my fellow forum users; but I couldn't figure anything out. I remember seeing that Full Member was awarded at 100+ posts, however I can't find anywhere that lists how many posts I've made. I don't intend to spam posts just to figure this out, but I've taken to trying to be more active on the forums as a result. Participating in threads where I feel like I have something to add, or just even welcoming people in hopes they don't feel overlooked or ignored.

I've likely made around 30 or so posts so far, which means I'd realistically expect to maybe hit Full Member next week (since the forum is about to close for Monday.) However I haven't been able to find anywhere that confirmed this suspicion, it very well could be time based, or awarded based on activity; I don't know if the system is automatic or given out by moderators.

Sorry if I seem nosy, I'm just really curious about how advancing through the ranks works since I'd love to actually interact with some of the higher level features; admittedly primarily gifts. I think they're a unique way to interact with fellow users, and I feel like they can add a lot of personality both for the person getting the gift, and the person sending it. It's a way of saying "I noticed this thing about you and thought you might like a little badge for it." I always find myself checking out everyone's little gifts to see what people think of them and what they're known for. It really makes me want to participate in that culture too, I guess I just want to know if I'm on the right track for that since I couldn't find anywhere that gave me a clear path towards it.

[Zombiethederg]

I think its based on post counts, from replies to topic creation. Im not quite sure personally myself, other than that I believe "Full Member" is based on 100 total posts. I dont even know how I got to my own rank tbh

[Melooon]

Iv attached the current grouping system below ~ im open to suggestions for a better system; this is just loosly how the group's were setup by default in the forums code!

As far as I know post count is increased by posts and topic creation! Its an easy metric for the forum to track, but not the best in terms of judging how helpful or thoughtful those posts have really been. In a perfect world ranks should be something manually granted to people based on what they post; but that's far beyond what we could handle as moderators 

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

but that's far beyond what we could handle as moderators 

Neither would I feel comfortable to judge the worth of postings (just speaking for myself here); a "Karma" or "Thank you" system would be better than this, but in my opinion still flawed, as it supports and encourages to create posts and topics that fit the seemingly prevalent taste of the board.

[VelvetSoul]

Yea that makes a lot of sense, and I can agree about the karma system. I think that's honestly the biggest issue I have with a lot of social media sites. The idea of gaining some kind of favor, notes, points; etc from your posts means that there will likely be bad actors who simply create drama to be the "right" one. Not to mention the people who may stop posting about personal interests and such because it's not in line with what they see the general culture of the forum moving towards. That could essentially create an echo chamber that silences users who are less popular, and favors those who got popular whether through legitimate means or simply by playing to the audience.

Though I also want to say, I'm literally just a new user so please take what I say with a major grain of salt, I don't want to tell you how to run your own forum obviously. It may sound weird for me to say I'm "passionate" about this forum, but it's the first place where I've felt welcome and actually enjoy engaging in conversation. Which is saying something because I've been on a few other forums looking for an alternative to social media for a while now. However, being passionate about it doesn't mean I, as new as I am; would want to be giving my thoughts on the forum's established systems if that makes sense, I'm literally too new to have such opinions yet.

I'm not entirely sure if the system currently in place is necessarily flawed to be honest. If I were to throw my two cents into the ring I would say that it's understandable. Features like gifts are cool, and people could always delete gifts they didn't want if they were sent something less than nice. However I think restricting it to Full Members makes sense, considering if someone has come to the forum and made 100 posts, they're likely engaging with the forum organically or genuinely. Whether or not they're accustomed to the culture of forums vs social media yet or not, they're trying and personally I couldn't fault someone for that. By which I mean it's unlikely someone in that situation would use those features for something negative, or want to cause harm in the first place. Likewise, obviously it'd be quick to notice someone spamming senseless topics and posts, and that would be a lot easier for a moderator to manage. If you suddenly see someone making a thread and just spamming it without any reason then sure, you could handle that before major damage is done. I think the big thing too is that outside of Gift giving I am not aware of other benefits to user ranks. So it's unlikely someone would generally end up at that point without being a fairly dedicated member of the forum in the first place. A random troll passing by to cause damage wouldn't likely bother to go through the barrier to entry of submitting a registration, and if they did they'd likely not even know about the gift system without spending time here.

I might not be making sense, sorry. I guess what I'm getting at is that while I understand that I have nothing but good intentions of wanting to engage with a fun feature of the forums. Not everyone is going to feel the same way; ultimately you don't want someone wandering in here and then spamming a bunch of rude or inappropriate gifts at people or something. Plus while they might not award additional features; rank does denote a certain status and especially for new users (such as myself) it's nice to be able to look at someone's rank and understand if they've been here a while or not.

If I make a thread asking about what is or isn't okay to do, if maybe the rules didn't mention something I'm concerned about. It's nice to be able to see that the guy saying "it's A-okay!" is ranked "newbie" but the guy saying "generally we wouldn't want that, and it's likely the moderators would delete it." is ranked "Full Member" as I'm able to glean a lot of information about which one is more trustworthy.

[zj]

Iv attached the current grouping system below ~ im open to suggestions for a better system; this is just loosly how the group's were setup by default in the forums code!

As far as I know post count is increased by posts and topic creation! Its an easy metric for the forum to track, but not the best in terms of judging how helpful or thoughtful those posts have really been. In a perfect world ranks should be something manually granted to people based on what they post; but that's far beyond what we could handle as moderators 

Hmm, after looking at my own profile, I appear to have less than 50 posts yet I am a jr. member.. i'm confused

[Melooon]

I appear to have less than 50 posts yet I am a jr. member.

Not according to the forum database! You've got 53; BUtttt sometimes the forums counts go out of sync (for example if you made a lot of posts in a thread that was later delisted) - if that's the case you might spontaneously drop if the forum decided to do a recount but those are pretty rare

[zj]

Not according to the forum database! You've got 53; BUtttt sometimes the forums counts go out of sync (for example if you made a lot of posts in a thread that was later delisted) - if that's the case you might spontaneously drop if the forum decided to do a recount but those are pretty rare

Oh, that makes sense! By delisted do you mean deleted by the original topic creator?

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Oh, that makes sense! By delisted do you mean deleted by the original topic creator?

Rather deleted by the staff or moved into the "Holding" area. Users can't delete their topics themself!
Yet, you have no posts there :). I believe that the whole post counting of the board software is rather broken.

[Dan Q]

About 18 months ago, Melooon shared the following statistics about the number of each "category" of member:

I was curious about how this had changed, so I did a little bit of data-diving (I'm sure Melooon could have done this much faster/easier, but the data's "all there" so I figured I'd just take a peep myself!):

	July 2024 Count	July 2024 %age	January 2026 Count	January 2026 %age
Newbie	1074	72.4%	2047	75.3%
Casual Poster	287	19.3%	384	14.1%
Jr. Member	69	4.6%	131	4.8%
Full Member	38	2.6%	86	3.2%
Sr. Member	13	0.9%	55	2.0%
Hero Member	3	0.2%	16	0.6%
Total	1484		2719

What does this show? Well:

• Membership is growing rapidly, almost doubling over the last 18 months 
• Category progression is moving along healthily: while the "newbie" category saw significant growth as a proportion of membership, there was also growth in "higher" ranks at the expense of "Casual Poster"s, demonstrating that people are, on average, continuing to engage with the forum too! (the biggest proportional growth areas were senior and hero members)
• This all looks like healthy behaviour for a growing forum, which is nice

[Melooon]

was curious about how this had changed, so I did a little bit of data-diving

Your data is a tiny bit off since the group values actually changed at the start of last year to facilitate guilds, the new values are:
Newbie - 0 Posts
Casual Poster - 10 Posts
Jr. Member - 30 Posts
Full Member - 60 Posts
Sr. Member - 100 Posts
Hero Member - 300 Posts

Your right that member signups are way up, but whats always interested me is that post counts have not gone up, partly that's to do with the fact we have higher post standards now so there are less short posts and more longer ones. However overall member count does not seem to equate to posting activity and I dont think so many people are progressing through ranks

That's not a bad thing from a moderation perspective, things are about as busy as I'd like them to be, and the people posting are the people who want to post, but I do wonder about the long term viability of the forum part of this forum; I can imagine a future where the forum might be outlived by the art hub and the surf club as the primary reasons people are joining.

I think a forum will always be preset here as long as ML exists, but it may not always be the central focus

[Dan Q]

Your data is a tiny bit off since the group values actually changed at the start of last year to facilitate guilds, the new values are:
Newbie - 0 Posts
Casual Poster - 10 Posts
Jr. Member - 30 Posts
Full Member - 60 Posts
Sr. Member - 100 Posts
Hero Member - 300 Posts

Ah, that's interesting! I wondered if the numbers on the levels might have changed but couldn't find a conclusive source. Glad to have one now! That especially goes a long way to explaining the jump in number of people on ranks at the higher end, where the number-of-posts-needed has changed by the largest numbers.

(Huh, it also means I'm apparently two-thirds of the way to Hero Member, not two-fifths as I thought when I wrote that post.)