Normally I am pretty critical about community updates like these, but I am happy to see this change happen. The Top Contributor system was fine at the beginning with the responsibilities given, but didn’t scale well and resulted in several problems:
The program just felt like it didn’t have a purpose for the entire time I was part of it.
Getting in was difficult and inconsistent since there wasn’t any consistent metrics used and it relied on recognizing users. As an example, it took one member that we requested more than 5 months to get added.
There weren’t any inherit benefits other than the title on the forum and access to a Discord server. Said Discord server was only used by about 30% of the Top Contributors and mostly involved forwarding posts to have moved/unlisted to Lead Top Contributors.
Changing the program to be automatic selection while still being manual approval and only awarding a forum role addresses the problems I have with the system. My one complaint about this is actually a limitation with the forum software. Flairs (small icons next to our name) are given by the role, and Discourse can mess up with multiple roles that have flairs. This means “Community Post Approvers”, “Community Sages”, and “Community Champions” IMO the name should be changed can’t simultaneously have the “Top Contributor” role.
I believe all sages have the top contributor group already (I might be wrong). Post approval seems to have been TC already before becoming Post Approval, which means the only one I can see that might mess up is the Champions group, though Champions are somewhat of the same group as TCs now anyways (Both groups are essentially recognized and active community members, it just happens that one is semi-automatic, and one isn’t).
We have the badges, but not the role. Badges are displayed on the badges page, while roles handle the permissions and other cosmetic elements like the title next to the username and the icon next to our profiles.
So it’s a problem of which flair is displayed? I’m curious here, are the flairs in a specific priority (Post Approval flair being prioritized over TC, Sage flair being prioritized over Post Approval, etc), or is it whatever group you’re added to first?
Either way, I get the feeling that admins could change your flairs/add to group manually (since TC still requires manual review, it could be as simple as the person adding you to the TC group asking which flair/title you want).
Obviously the not being added to groups one is concerning, though that might be something that Discourse Meta already answered. I’ll have a look through Discourse’s forums and see if there’s a quick-fix.
According to one of the Community Sages, Discourse will randomize the flair since there is no prioritization method. It would be up to Discourse to fix if this is the case.
Being an administrator and editor of the unofficial wikia, it has been quite complicated documenting top contributor when there was no information available on it. Glad that this has been clarified, and congratulations to all of those who have been promoted!
I do have one question, however. How will this change affect the community champions group? Both groups, as far as I know at least, seem to be based upon the same thing: activity on the forum, outstanding contributor, etc. Is there any large distinction between the two that makes one harder to get/less common than the other?
Every few months, this title is given to Members that have a combination of all of these: high likes received to post ratios, high topics read/entered counts, a good forum standing in terms of moderation, and consistent forum activity.
It’s possible you didn’t quite meet one of these requirements - and if you did meet all, there could be a historical reason that you were not selected. Probably better to ask someone in charge directly instead of on this post.
Very, very good changes. Not only are the Member promotions automated now, Top Contributors are as well. This will obviously be rewarding to anyone helping out and contributing the forums a lot, as you no longer need to post and hope your post is actually seen; it is now automated!
Community Sage is also a great addition, which I definitely believe serves its purpose and will come of great use to the developers.
Also glad to see Post Approval is now on its own team. No more confusion regarding who actually approves posts.
Overall, very nice changes. Can’t wait to see what the future holds us.
As buildthomas said, likes aren’t the ONLY factor. Posts, likes, and other factors are looked at by the system.
Additionally, you have to be manually reviewed, so even if you do meet the requirements, DevEng (or Sages?) have to manually look at you, including how much you help others, your standing on the forum, and any moderation history on-forum.
I feel like these changes help the overall structure of the DevForum, as well as take weight off the Developer Relations team so that they can do their job more diligently.
I can’t express enough how delighted I am to see the ‘Community Sage’ role break ground, as my concerns from earlier in the week in the Updated Process of Achieving “Member” thread seem to be in direct correlation to it being added.
It puts a smile on my face knowing that opinions, no matter how big or small, are taken into account by the team. Excellent work all around.
