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"Let’s Talk About Leaderboards!" Event Summary

EX_Team
Community Manager
Community Manager
3 18 332

The purpose of the chat session on February 2, 2017, was to get feedback and insight about Leaderboards. We had an event: https://excommunity.becomeanex.org/events/1007-lets-talk-about-leaderboards?sr=search&searchId=072ed... This was a free-flowing conversation that also included related topics such as badges, points, and rewards on EX. We used a software platform called Chatzy which allowed all of us to “chat” as a group. The full transcript is attached to this Document, and we encourage you to read it and post any of your feedback as a reply.

Below is a summary of the major themes from this discussion. Action items for the EX Team are italicized. Points of particular emphasis are in bold.

Leaderboards
What Leaderboards do well

  • Leaderboards can be useful in making it clear to other members who is very active in certain areas of the EX Community.
  • You can filter the Leaderboards by "past week" and "past month" to see who has been most active recently (rather than “All time”) when the Leaderboard appears on the right side of the page.
  • Leaderboards are useful/motivating to some people and frustrating/misleading for other people. The EX Team will work to minimize the presence of Leaderboards in the Community where they seem least useful/motivating.

What Leaderboards don’t do as well

  • Leaderboards related to quitting or ranking quality of content (blogs in particular) are unlikely to resonate with EX members. They can be deceiving or invite competition about values that are incompatible with the values treasured on EX, such as supportiveness, caring, loyalty.
  • Ultimately, leadership is demonstrated by the things you do on EX – the way you respond to others’ blog posts and questions, post blogs/discussions of your own, and show support for others’ quits. Leaderboards simply cannot capture this “quititude,” the attitude and essence, the heart and soul, of different leaders and members on EX.

Alas, the ideal world isn’t the real world…

  • In an ideal world, the EX Team would know who has relapsed and when, and be able to revise any quitting-related leaderboards accordingly. EX members and the EX Team acknowledge that unfortunately, this is not possible.
  • In an ideal world, the EX Team could manually remove inactive members from the all-time leaderboards (so that historically active members who are no longer active would not still be near the top). EX members and the EX Team acknowledge that this is a limitation of Jive that we cannot overcome.

Badges

  • Most members who participated in the live chat agree that badges are not the *reason* for quitting, or coming back to EX, or finding EX valuable in supporting your quit. That being said, they can be fun and supportive and motivating!
  • Giving a badge can be a quick and easy way to thank someone for helping you, in addition to supporting someone else for committing to their quit.
  • It’s great to be able to give each other badges. The EX Team will explore ways to add more badges that members can give each other, particularly for quitting-related milestones (and especially the “no-man’s land” part of the quitting journey).
  • Badges do not have to correspond with points or any kind of Leaderboard. They ones you give each other are more just image “stickers” of sorts to give others a smile and let them know you’re supporting/encouraging/congratulating them. 
  • No badge is a replacement for the feeling of support that comes from another member or Elder helping, supporting, or encouraging you. Badges can just be an additional way for members/Elders to send those sentiments.

Points and Rewards

  • Points are automatically calculated based only on your activity in the EX Community.
  • Leaderboard positions are based on number of points. It is possible that someone who was very active in the past but is not currently active will still have many points and therefore be at the top of the Leaderboards, but over time, this will change and more recently active people will rise to the top.
  • A few EX members referenced “Rewards” on EX. The EX Team would like to clarify that "Rewards" is just the name provided by Jive. No physical or monetary rewards are provided in correlation with the Leaderboard.
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