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.
