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Core Community Program [BETA] - NOW LIVE!

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Greetings, everyone! Duncan here. I have some very exciting news that I’d like to share with you. We’re kicking off the Core Community Program, a way to recognize people for adding value to their community and helping others do more of what they love.
By offering advice, interacting with others, answering questions, giving recommendations, posting memes, or however else you’re contributing, you’re making the greater community a better place for everyone. This program is set up to acknowledges and gives you status for those contributions.
The program provides a badge and additional rewards for each core community member based on their endorsement count within a specific community. Endorsements are a useful and easy way members of the community can show each other appreciation for making the community better.
This program helps to make endorsements matter more by tying your endorsement count within a community to your status in that community. While this is a great place to start for, we’ll be looking to hear your feedback for additional ways to evolve the program and make sure all core community members are being recognized.
We’ll get into more of the details now, and again, we’d like to thank everyone in advance for participating.

PROGRAM We’re launching the Core Community Program as a Beta in the combined Outdoors and Ultralight Communities. We chose these communities because we want to make sure we test and develop this program with a careful approach to nail down the structure before we fully launch it in the rest of the communities. Your feedback will be critical to helping shape the program as we expand to the other communities.
TIERS There will be three tiered levels as we start the program: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. And as it evolves we may add more. Each level will require a certain amount of endorsements 👍 within a community. These levels will grow within their respective communities as the communities grow themselves.
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Representations of the different Core Community Member tiers for Outdoors/Ultralight.
Level Requirements for Beta (Outdoors & Ultralight only):
· Bronze: 150 endorsements · Silver: 300 endorsements · Gold: 600 endorsements
When we fully rollout the program, we’re going to increase the requirements so make sure to get in take part before we do!
These numbers will change based on how people are using them, and we expect them to be around the numbers we’ve outlined below when we fully launch the program.
Level Requirements for Launch (Outdoors & Ultralight only):
· Bronze: 500 endorsements · Silver: 1,250 endorsements · Gold: 2,500 endorsements
One of the biggest challenges with setting up a program like this within Massdrop is making sure the endorsement levels make sense across all of the communities. There are a number of factors that complicate this including the size of the community, the activity of the community, and how quickly it is growing. Because of this, we’ve decided to set distinct targets within each community, and have those targets increase at a pre-determined time frame based on the size of the community. We’ll be fleshing this increase out further before it is brought to other communities, and will take into account the feedback from everyone involved.
Note: Once you get a badge, you keep it. We want you to maintain your status once you achieve it, even if the levels increase over time.
BADGING When you get enough endorsements in a given community, your profile image/name/title will get the corresponding badge (Bronze, Silver or Gold) of that community in discussion posts. To start off, there will only be one badge for the combined Outdoors and Ultralight communities, and that badge will only show up on pages in that community. This means if you’re a ‘Gold Outdoors/Ultralight Community Member’ your badge won’t show up while visiting Mech Keys or Cooking pages. We may expand the ability for badges to show up in other places, including your profile, down the road.
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Image of pop-up card after clicking/tapping on ‘Core Member’ text.
MODERATION Participation in this program is going to give you a greater status in the communities you give value to, but the same rules apply to Core Community Members as they do for everyone else.
PERKS & REWARDS We want to incentivize and reward those that take part in this program and bring value to their respective communities. These are just a few initial items that we felt would be valuable including bolstering your identity within the community, getting samples to try out and review, and interacting with our team directly.
If you have any thoughts on what we have here or something that you think would be interesting, let us know. We want to shape this so that it’s valuable as well as interesting to you.
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· Community-specific badge (Outdoors & Ultralight only for Beta) · Exclusive Email Updates · Samples for Reviews · Tier-specific Giveaways · Collaboration Involvement · And more...
We’re really, really excited about this program and want to do everything we can to make it a success, especially for you, the community.
TL;DR · Core Community Program. · Endorsements in a community = badge, perks, rewards. · It’s only in Outdoors/Ultralight for now until we fully launch it later. · With great status comes great responsibility. Abuse it and you lose it. · What do you think??

FAQ’s Q: How do I find out if I have a badge or how close I am to getting one?
A: You’ll see a special line underneath your name in the discussion (as seen in one of the images above) that says ‘Core Outdoors/Ultralight Member’. It will be visible to everyone within those communities. You won’t be able to see it in other communities. Until we fully launch the program, you won’t be able to tell how exactly close you are, but we’ll be working on that so you can.
Q: Why endorsements?
A: We’re constantly evolving how the site works and how we measure the value that people are creating in communities. As it stands, our endorsement system is the best way to gauge that.
Q: Why can’t I see my badge/activity on my profile page?
A: You’ll be able to see your activity within the pop-up card (as seen in the picture above) for now, but when we fully launch the program, we’re aiming to be able to see everything you need on your profile page.
Q: I have more endorsements in other communities, why am I getting an Outdoors/Ultralight badge?
A: The program is kicking off in Outdoors/Ultralight only so badges won’t be available for other communities until we fully launch the program.
Q: When other communities are added in, how will that work?
A: Every community is a bit different than the other, but especially in size. Different communities will need different amounts of endorsements to level up in the program, and that amount will grow as communities grow in size.
Q: How do I get a badge?
A: Get endorsements on Talk Posts and comments within the Outdoors/Ultralight communities. It’s still valuable to get endorsements on Talk Posts and comments in other communities of course, but we’re only offering badges for Outdoors/Ultralight for the BETA of the program. The more you engage with everyone else in the community, the more endorsements you’ll get. The more valuable your Talk Posts and comments are will also get you more endorsements. If you get 150 endorsements within the Outdoors/Ultralight communities, you’ll get a Bronze badge, and so on.
Q: I don’t have a lot of endorsements even though I add a lot of value.
A: This isn’t a question.. But it’s a valid point. One of the things we’ll be working to do is make sure that people who participate in conversation or make great content get their contributions surfaced so they’ll get more endorsements. For the future, we will also will be looking at other ways people add value that can’t be captured simply by endorsement counts.

I’ll be answering questions in the comments below, and passing along all of your feedback to the team. Let us know what you think!

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RayF
22214
Jan 11, 2019
Exciting news @steve --was just awarded my 237th Bronze -Level award in only 43 hours! Could be a new MD record--how many Bronze Level notifications did you receive yesterday?
(Edited)
RayF
22214
Jan 11, 2019
I remember when I used to fly for business--I racked up more miles than I could use--eventually I sold them for cash. Accordingly, I'm offering my unused, surplus Bronze-Level awards to those less fortunate than myself. Prices as follows: 1-award: 25 cents, 5-awards for a dollar (all sales final). Contact @Duncan for details!
RayF
22214
Jan 11, 2019
Is there an award for getting more awards than anybody else?
RayF
22214
Jan 10, 2019
@Duncan You'll be hearing from my attorneys in the morning!


(Edited)
RayF
22214
Jan 9, 2019
@Duncan Still getting eight notifications per day--no change since I brought the issue to your attention.
Duncan
3731
Jan 9, 2019
RayFYikes. Sorry. Working on that.
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RayF
22214
Jan 9, 2019
And, and... I'd like to thank the Academy...and, all the little people who--seem to be unable to make it stop--I mean, who've made this possible--it's the greatest honor in all my life--at least, since the other 30 or 40 times today (sniff--wipes away tears), I only hope I can live up to your expectations...

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SAnCLT
62
Jan 8, 2019
My concern is (much like FB et al) we will now have people on here just 'fishing for likes' which will lead to much more drivel to slog through to get to the stuff that is actually relevant/meaningful. Everything doesn't have to be Facebook'd to be useful. You better hire a whole bunch of editors/moderators...or in turn, you will drive your 'CORE' customer base away. And now I see this is from back in May - C'mon Ray !! I stand by my original commentary.
(Edited)
RayF
22214
Jan 9, 2019
SAnCLTI was complaining about duplicate badge notifications, not the program over all. @Duncan was trying to help, but he's also filling in for the bartender on MD's corporate jet--so, you know...he's like, a busy guy.
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(Edited)
RayF
22214
Jan 8, 2019
Badges?!!! "We don-need no MORE es-stink'n badges!!!"

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RayF
22214
Jan 8, 2019
Seems I've heard that before...
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RayF
22214
Jan 9, 2019
I was months ago, now I'm getting a dozen notifications about it per day. What's the story?
RayF
22214
Jan 6, 2019
Wow this is really great--was just notified for the 27th time today, I've achieved Bronze Level Core Community Member status. You'd think once was enough, but I just found out, after twenty notifications, you get a mask and cape!

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Duncan
3731
Jan 7, 2019
Yikes. One of our engineers is taking care of it this morning..
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RayF
22214
Jan 7, 2019
DuncanOkie-doke!
RayF
22214
Jan 5, 2019
I've been notified EIGHT TIMES in the last 24hrs that I've given a Bronze-Level (award?)--thing is, I was already at the Bronze level and had been for more than a month. Since being notified yesterday, the badge no longer shows on my profile image. I can live with being de-badged, if that's the point. Otherwise, the algorithm that awards/removes the distinction, might need a little tweaking?
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