What’s New in the MTC? September 2023 – Community Ranks
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.Ranks
Hi all, We are currently considering refreshing the community rank structure and making it clearer what rank community members have. Presently our ranks are made up of the following 'generic' user types: Members / Visitors Typically, users with this rank have joined the community, visited a few times and maybe read a few articles but that is the limit of their participation Contributors This overly broad range of users is everything from someone who has commented on at least two posts / started two conversations all the way up to our honored contributor who must have reached (btw this is also why previously we have not shared this information, it's not a straightforward as you might imagine): (posts - deleted posts) + ideas >= 8000 Been a member for at least 208 days Likes received + (accepted solutions * 10) >= 1500 Has been given admin points totaling 300 or more Employees MVPs Community Managers Now we are going to leave out Employees, MVPs and Community Managers, at least for now. but my broad stroke idea is to make the rank names marry up closer to user activity i.e. New Members (Users who have just joined and not really done anything) Visitors (Users who have been a member over two weeks who have visited at least twice and only read pages) Praisers (per visitors + have given at least 1 like to a post or user) Conversation starters ( per visitors + praisers and also have started at least one new topic) Knowledge sharers ( per visitors, praisers, conversations starters and have replied at least once) Experts (per visitors, praisers, conversation starters, knowledge sharers and have at least 10 Accepted solutions) Now all these broad strokes are still to be defined (i.e. exactly what each level in each rank will be) but I would like to ask the community what the rank names for all these roles should be. Now keep in mind we can't use names that are trademarks or copyrighted to anyone else, so everyone thinking of their favorite superhero cartoon.. forget it that is a definite no!! Unfortunately, the current rank engine doesn't let us target specific communities either so we can't have Excel Expert etc.. In 1 week - on Monday, 28th Feb - we will create a shortlist poll of the names we can proceed with and ask you all to vote for your favorite. I am hoping by then I will be able to better define how many levels will be present in each rank as well. To be clear, there is no prize for the winner and names will be accepted and shortlisted purely at our Team's discretion. To get you started here are some very simple ones we have considered: New Member Visitor Supporter Conversationalist Knowlegable Expert We have also considered using the same rank structure that is used in other Microsoft Communities, i.e. Power Users & Power BI As we are larger than these communities, we may need to tweak some of the thresholds of these ranks and our concern was you all might find it confusing if you had a different rank in each community. Or convert activities into points and use a levels system like the Microsoft Rewards team do, although this would be much more complicated to ensure progression through the levels at a reasonable rate. Hope this gets your creative juices flowing.
(New here) Need help acquiring a copy of a game for a project
Hello, I am a college-prep student and I am doing a project comparing different versions of a game. I am not sure where I should go to talk to a developer or a higher up who could possibly get a (test) copy for me to use for my studies. If anyone could point me in the right direction that would be greatly appreciated.
