New Post Rank System
 

Based off of some suggestions, I have decided to make this into a poll.

Currently, ToS features 8 different poster ranks. They are as follows:

0 - Sky Person
25 - Seeker
100 - One Of The People
500 - Taronyu
1,000 - Tsamsiyu
2,500 -Olo'eyktan
5,000 - Toruk Makto
10,000 - Neytiri Makto

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/8...stribution.jpg

The distribution of ranks is rather narrow. The great majority of active posters are spread amongst a mere 4 ranks.

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My proposal is to increase the number of ranks from 8 to 24. My new proposed system is as follows:
Translations are given in ()

<5 – Ketuwong (alien)
5 – Sky Person
15 - Avatar Driver
25 – Dreamwalker
50 – Sngä’iyu (beginner)
75 – Numeyu (student)
100 – ‘Eylan (friend)
150 - Hapxìtu (member)
200 – One of the People
250 – Pali Makto (direhorse rider)
350 - Taronyu (hunter)
500 - Tsamsiyu (warrior)
750 – Ikran Makto (banshee rider)
1,000 - Nawmtu (great person)
1,250 - Karyu (teacher)
1500 - tsulfätu (master/expert)
2,000 -Tsahik (shaman)
2,500 - Olo'eyktan (leader)
3,500 – Palulukan Makto (thanator rider)
5,000 - Toruk Makto (great leonopteryx rider)
7,500 - Lekye'ung (insane)
10,000 - Rey’eng (the Balance of Life)
17,500 - Keltsun (impossible)
25,000 - Jake Makto/ Neytiri Makto (:awesome:)

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/862...stribution.jpg

Under this system, the majority of active posters are spread amongst 13 ranks with several additional higher ranks to progress to in the future.

Overall, I think the new system is a great improvement over the old system. While not of any real importance, poster ranks can be fun. If you have any comments/changes/additions you would like to suggest to the proposed system, then feel free to discuss.

Edit Changes 10/28/10: "lurker" is now "ketuwong", added "Avatar Driver" rank for 15 posts
Edit Changes 10/06/10: Ranks updated according to proposal by HNM
Edit 10/8/10: System now implemented.

supported

Sounds awesome! Voted, because who doesn't like ranking up? :awesome: The more often, the better.

Voted for it :)

well, why not, a bit change is never wrong :D perhaps this could motivate me to post again a bit :D

I don't really see the point of lurker... doesn't really fit in. Other than that, I like it :)

I'm a Karyu! :awesome:

A-F had the lurker rank (thats where I got the idea.) If you look at things from a mathematical perspective also, we ideally would want the distribution of ranks to look evenly skewed with the higher ranks having less members in general. If a rank is very high or very low beyond the trend curve, then the values may need some adjustment.

In the old system, "One of the People" held more members the rank below it. At a large value of around 60, it is highly statistically significant. This meant that reaching "Taronyu" was disproportional to the other ranks. This makes sense as 100 to 500 is a gargantuan leap compared to the gap of 25 to 100 from "seeker" to "one of the people".

Looking at the distribution graph for the new ranks, we would have 83 sky persons and 201 lurkers. If we factor out all members with 0 posts, that leaves us with 75 lurkers. The value for sky people would be rather high. This indicates that the "sky person" rank would still be disproportional to other ranks. Eliminating the "lurker" rank would further aggravate the situation by bumping up the number of "sky persons" from 83 to 158 members. If we want to smooth out the curve, then ideally we would need to have a rank at <5, 5-14, and 15-24 posts. The inclusion of an additional rank at 15 posts would split "sky person" into two ranks of around 45 and 35 members. Although not complete perfect, having a distribution of 75, 45, 35, 33 would smooth out the ranking system for newer members.

So the question is, what could fill as a rank for 15 posts? Maybe we could shift all ranks from "one of the people" down and add a higher rank also, I dunno.

There is method to my madness. I did not choose these values randomly. Speculation on how to smooth out the 1 to 25 post gap would be appreciated.

Edit: I may run some actual statistics later and calculate the residuals which would give us an indication as to whether any other ranks need to be further adjusted. A rank at 200 posts may also help (one of the people is still a tad bit high) but its not as necessary.

I voted yes. I'm fine with either though.

Sure. Why not? :)

Sorry, I'm not much of a fan of copying AF for the sake of it. If anyone has a good justification, then go ahead :)
As it is, I think the curve looks fine without an extra at the lower end. Could even make Sky Person <5 and have a new one for 5-24 which isn't the same :)

Personally, I'm not hugely bothered by whether a rank has more than one above or below, it's not like they are anything but a nice title below your name :)

I can understand thinking about numbers of people in the middle, but really, the entire forum has a lot of people with a postcount in the middle range, so it will never be 'perfect'.

Neytiri Makto, eh? :P

Great work Banefull. I see no reason to not implement the new ranks.

How about "Fresh Meat" instead of lurker. In reference to one of the worst lines in the movie, from one of the most annoying characters.

Not exactly the most welcoming rank for a new member :P.

This has my full support.

So I was brain storming a bit more on lower ranks and came up with this:

<5 - New Recruit
5 - Sky person
15 - Avatar Driver
25 - Dreamwalker
etc

That would make for 21 ranks. Thoughts?

Perhaps it would work. That also gives me an idea. Ketuwong is the Navi term for "alien". Ketuwong could fill for the lowest rank.

Ketuwong works good.

Outsider feels to unfriendly, though :P

This place does need a little change. I'll say yes. Why not? :)

Other than the decision that's being made now, I think it's a great idea.

I'm up for seeing this go into action too. :)

Nice one Banefull.

Seems like "Avatar Driver" and "Dreamwalker" are a bit redundant.

A dreamwalker refers to the avatar itself. An avatar driver is the human driving the avatar. An avatar cannot drive its own avatar. To become an dreamwalker, you first have to become an avatar driver. By definition, Jake Sully and Norm were "avatar drivers" several years before they could be properly referred to as dreamwalkers.

Ah... I see. :)

one think to say; Why not?

Voted yos

Well said :)

Also, Ketuwong is far better than outsider or lurker, I definitely agree about especially 'outsider' not being very welcoming. Technically, I consider a lurker someone who hasn't posted, rather than posted a few times :P

Agree'd, I think that i we substitute Ketuwong for lurker that list is about perfect, unless someone else has some spectacular Idea none of us has thought of :P

oh and I also think that The Na'vi words should have the english terms next to them because not everyone speaks Na'vi well enough to understand them. (I don't :P)

I agree. There's one problem with these new ranks... I have no idea what they mean. :D

You guys are right about that. But I think the ranks that are in Na'vi fit the theme of the site since it's about Avatar.

How about Eywa Makto for males, and Aihwa Makto for females?

:awesome:

Maybe if there were a thread made about the new ranks on the Forum News Section, explaining what each rank meant so no one'd be confused...

Most of them are already common words. The majority of posters are already familiar with avatar and would know what "pali makto" or "palulukan makto" means.

The only ranks I see that could potentially have some issues are:
Ketuwong
Numeyu
'Eylan
Nawmtu
Karyu
Lekye'ung

So its really only 6 ranks. If someone wants to know what their rank means, they can look it up on a thread or the navi dictionary in a few seconds. If anything, it encourages people to learn Navi. Putting the English translations would take some of the "fun" out of the post ranks.