We need points, ranks, and rewards to encourage activity

[Kyle]

I've been waiting for points, ranks, and rewards to be integrated as a core Ning feature since you acquired Scripts4Ning... I'd love to have 4-5 different levels for members to aspire to based on activity in all areas, expertise on particular network topics, and seniority. The level badges would be customizable by network and would be displayed similar to your current Ning badges on profile photos. This solution would be great for all networks including Creators. Having ranks and the reward (badge) will drive people who are passionate about a network to want to contribute to attain this advanced status. This would be very useful as a general feature on all of our networks to encourage activity.

[Jordi]

I agree

[Kaushik Raghupathi]

This is really what i feel is the number # 1 feature i need to create real user engagement. Frankly i would trade the entire set of enhancements in the 2011 roadmap for this one feature alone. I think we need to really prioritize. How useful is a design overhaul and how many people will really think of the design studio as a must have as against a way to rank and reward users using a ranking system. Seems that the ning seems a little silent on this one.

[Eric Suesz]

Hello, Kaushik. I don't think we've been silent. Keep in mind there must be a balance between what you want and others want, and keep in mind that the platform serves old NCs and new NCs who have never begun a Web site. We try to take as much feedback as possible and incorporate it into our plans. We have more engagement system improvements coming. Will it match what you envision? Probably not, but hopefully it will get close to satisfying your wants.

[Anthony]

Hi Eric,

Can you give us a teaser on what to expect in the up coming engagement system improvements.?

[Kaushik Raghupathi]

Eric, Thanks for the response. Really this is one feature that NCs have been talking about in every forum and there is a huge demand for it. Also this is a default feature in pretty much every forum out there and is typically the center of the growth of the forums. I do understand there were some scalability issues with the scripts4ning script, however is there a way to provide atleast a scaled down version a simple point system against each user on the leaderboard.

 

If not points can we atleast indicate how the leaderboard is calculated. For example the top member has 10 discussions, 2 blog posts, 2 comments, against his profile on the leaderboard. Even showing the data behind the leaderboard would be good starting point for a ranking system. Where are such features in your product roadmap ? Do let us know.

 

 

[Kaushik Raghupathi]

Would like to call out all NCs to support this thread. I hate to keep bringing this up, but i really really feel strongly about this feature. I think this is the single most important feature for a community to make its members feel valued, as a result getting people to keep coming back, building a core group of high contributors, and generate a lot of activity.

 

Ning is a great community and i love it, i can see a huge amount of effort from the development team in building new features, but if only they could put some thought into this one. What i fail to understand is that why cannot you simply add a points into the current leaderboard itself, all you need to do is to assign some rules to the current algo that you already have for determining the user leaderboard. why is that not being considered ?

 

 

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Kaushik. Totally hear you that this would be a good feature. I suppose adding points to the Leaderboard could be a possibility, although it would require additional development. I know it seems simple, but a feature like this would require a lot of additional data collection from across your network and it would also mean an additional interface, admin tools, etc. 

It's worth noting that others have similar "single most important" features in mind. I found a few with a quick search on Creators: 

• "For me, the single most important feature would be to give private networks the ability to set different viewing options for various content i.e. the ability for visitors to view some content before signing up."
• "I would just like to say that I think the single most important feature that needs to be added asap is the ability to reply to status updates."
• "This is why the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE Ning lacks - as I know keep saying - is the option for members to post spontaneous, off-the-cuff messages (status updates, but without the pink surround which makes them look too self-important) with the option for other members to reply."

I think what this points out is that our customers are very vocal! We've done a ton just in the last year, and we like hearing about what you want to see next. 

Not saying this idea is not worth doing, just that we have to have priorities, and this one isn't currently at the top of the list. Everyone has their must-have. The challenge is getting those must-haves turned into realities. 

All that said: It's a really great suggestion, and I'll pass it along to our team! 

[Kaushik Raghupathi]

Hi Eric,

 

I totally understand what you mean. And it really means a lot for the Ning team to respond each of our posts and our must have features and keep the conversation going  :-)

 

I had a suggesstion, why not have a simple poll for competing features and pick the top voted ones for rollout. I understand a product roadmap cannot be driven purely by community feedback but how about having a mix for a few community voted features for each release maybe ? I do know that many products have started this using getstatisfaction or some polls etc.

 

Cheers,

Kaushik

 

 

[Eric Suesz]

I'm definitely familiar with Get Satisfaction. Big fan. UserVoice is the one that allows you to vote on features, but to be honest we have not embraced pure voting online.

We do, however, have someone here who does some pretty serious polls, and we have a Creators Council made up of NCs. I also pass along suggestions from Creators to the product people in my own weekly report, and the majority of our organization follows along with what people suggest here.

It's hard to balance everyone's needs, and at the end of the day we have engineers and our CEO and other voices that weigh in. Lots and lots of inputs. I know it's probably more satisfying as a customer to see raw voting in real time, but as an organization grows larger (you'll notice that most companies that use UserVoice for this are actually tiny start-ups), plotting its future becomes pretty important — and not as easy as opening and closing a poll.  

Besides, what if everyone voted and we had to drop everything and make a giant set of smiley emoticons!!! We'd never get to recurring events, then. 

[Kaushik Raghupathi]

I think more than anyone else out there Ning should be most interested in supporting the power of the community voice :-) .. i doubt if you open out polling to a paying group NCs that we would vote for a set of smiley emoticons, im sure all of us would be more responsible that that.

[Chris Rebibes Delacruz]

I totally agree!  If we have a rewarding system, we would be able to encourage more of our members to participate.

I am just posting here to support this idea.

[Rowald]

Adding my support to! Mobile and bonus are the most important things in my opinion.