What’s New in the MTC? September 2023 – Community Ranks

[Cecilia_Bergstedt]

Our Mission at the MTC is to provide a community Microsoft users can get the latest news, ask questions, learn new skills, and connect with peers and Microsoft experts from around the world.

This month, we are rolling out a new ranking system designed to recognize users’ contributions to the community and add a little more ‘Microsoft’ to the MTC.

What are the Community Ranks?

We now have two ranking ladders to recognize both types of our tech community members.

We have our Contributors Ranks for those who come to the MTC to interact and ask/answer questions in our forums, blogs, and events. Some of you Microsoft gamers may notice the subtle nod ;)

Contributor Ranks

Onyx Contributor

Titanium Contributor

Diamond Contributor

Platinum Contributor

Gold Contributor

Silver Contributor

Bronze Contributor

Steel Contributor

Iron Contributor

Brass Contributor

Copper Contributor

And for our members who come to the MTC to catch up on news and learn something new from the blogs, we have our Reader Ranks! These are replacing our Visitor/Member ranks, and once you start posting in the MTC, you will move into the Contributor Ranks.

Reader Ranks

Senior Reader

Prolific Reader

Regular Reader

Frequent Reader

Casual Reader

Occasional Reader

New Reader

(Please note that these rankings are intended for fun and are not a measure of MTC’ers technical competence.)

What goes into the Community Ranks?

When you become a member of the MTC, you start climbing the ranking ladder, starting as a New Reader. As you contribute more and more to the community, you will start to climb the rank ladder.

Here are some of the key ingredients that go into our ranking recipe (*These points are awarded each time an activity is completed):

• Viewing messages (0.25 points)
• Commenting on blogs, ideas, and TKB articles (1 point)
• Creating new discussion topics (1 point)
• Replying to forum discussions (2 points)
• Giving (2 points) and receiving Kudos (4 points)
• Contributing Ideas (5 points)
• Authoring blog articles (10 points)
• Publishing Knowledge Base articles (10 points)
• Getting your replies marked as a solution (15 points)

Simply put, the more you engage and interact with the MTC, the more points you earn and the higher your community ranking will be!

If you have any questions on these new rankings or you’d like to share feedback with the Tech Community Team, let us know in the comments below.

[#2]

Hi @Dimitri! Good question :)
Once a user is no longer an MVP, they will be dropped back in at the rank that's appropriate to their participation. So, if you become an MVP at the Iron contribution level, then you would return to the Iron level if you do not renew your MVP status.

[#3]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt 

Thank you for that.  It was causing a certain about of grief!

[#4]

Hi @Reza,
Appreciate your feedback! We want to make sure that our ranking structure is as fair as possible. You are correct that only certain roles are allowed publishing privileges, typically MS employees and its partners/vendors but also external contributors. However, since Microsoft employees are excluded from this ranking structure, the only users who are able to earn points for publishing blogs are individuals outside of MS that have been invited to contribute to a blog, and we do want to recognize these individuals for their contributions to the community.

[#5]

Hi @Sergei,
All editing permissions should be the same as before. The only changes we've made are to the rank names and clarifying how you earn points for engaging in the community.
If you encounter any issues or blocks you wouldn't normally see prior to the name change, please let us know and we will look into it! :)

[#6]

Allen, as for me 3 colours are enough - current red and blue; and another one for all the rest. 

[#7]

Hi Cecilia,
Thank you for the clarification.

[#8]

Great news !

[#9]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt  Is there any relation between this ranking and MVP programs in Microsoft?

Thanks, 

Vinoth_Azure

[#10]

Hi @Vinoth--
Thank you for your question! MVPs are exempt from these rankings, so if a community member becomes an MVP, they will pause at their current contributor rank until they no longer have MVP status. At which point, they will revert back to their most recent ranking.

Hope that helps!

[#11]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt  

Your answer confirms that a change is needed for MVPs - because they are omitted, their participation and contribution to the time of being MVP, it is simply not visible to the MTC ranking - > this is not fair in my opinion, I think my idea will get support - please vote:

Apply equal rules for MVP Community rankings. - Microsoft Community Hub

[#12]

Hmm! Interesting...

[#13]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt 
Correct in assuming the rankings are a Halo reference? 

[#14]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt 
One suggestion for the ranking points,

I think marking someone's response as a best answer/solution should also grant points. Many people forget to mark best solution, so having an incentive to do so would maybe help with that.

[#15]

@JJones_  Hi,

The added points are not visible to the user - it is better to add a badge (you marked the first best answer, then 3, then 5 answers.)

This can improve the interest and engagement of MTC Members.

[#16]

@A1 

Or both even! But yes, best answers are pretty important for helping people who are just reading forums. It would be good to incentivize people marking best answer.

[#17]

@JJones_  

Marking (the best answer) by the author of the post should be mandatory! - Microsoft Community Hub

Please make suggestions and vote for my idea :)

Of course, you can add your own idea to vote for its implementation in MTC.

[#18]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt 

As of September, I am an MVP. How do I get my status changed to MVP on MTC?  

Thank you.

[#19]

@Teresa_Cyrus  

Congratulation! Support line for Microsoft Tech Community? - Microsoft Community Hub

There is an email address in this post, please contact the MTC admin team - this is a good confirmed way to implement this :)

[#20]

@Cecilia_Bergstedt 

So what I have read so far is all developers now have to have a minimum of a Doctorate degree and a bunch of time to build a simple site. I have been developing SharePoint sites for over 23 years and what I have always found is stay away from developing in the backend of the box, name your CSS different than microsofts, CAML queries for dynamics are best, make the site simple for people to use, don't give users the same ability as the developers, based on permissions show items required for a group of users querying the permissions group. The only thing that I truly like vs SharePoint designer workflows is Power Automate. However, microsoft changes faster than you can enjoy a good product for them to make a worse product. Bringing back SharePoint Designer for use would make my life so much easier than spending months on SPFx and NodeJS that has been driving me crazy with errors everywhere I can't fix. I'm done with that and have been trying to build a blank page and incorporate what I know in JavaScript inside. It has been a challenge since microsoft has taken away the best and kept the worst of SharePoint. I know alot of people love the SPFx stuff because they love spending hours and hours coding and trying to do work-a-rounds for almost everything. Me I love making SharePoint pages with less than 1000 lines of code. Reading some of the SPFx code examples is more than 20k lines of code for simple stuff. Us old school types can get the job done bigger and better our way. Please stop going back in time. I remember having the problems I am facing now before SharePoint Designer in 2003 with Team Foundation Server. Bringing it back? Seriously did you really believe that it would magically get better? 

[#21]

Hello, I think you might be responding to the wrong thread. This thread is about rankings in the Microsoft Tech Community website. Could you have meant to have posted this in this thread about SharePoint Designer, where you've previously posted in? https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/sharepoint/can-we-still-use-sharepoint-designer-with-sharepoi...