Giulia wrote:
Will there be a 'gaming" system in the new platform we're moving to? Will our point status be carried over? If not, perhaps we should give away all our points right now to the wonderful quitters on this platform before it morphs.
And speaking of the new platform to come - I for one hate surprises. And the only hints that have been given is that the platform is going to change within the next couple of months and that it will be different. I think to ease the community's transition, the more hints, the better. Otherwise it's going to be a total shock to most if they haven't happened upon a blog where that has been mentioned. Just like with quitting, we need to get our heads in gear for the process to come. To be prepared. And speaking for myself only, having been through numerous platform changes with EX, it's a rough experience. Because all the furniture has suddenly been rearranged in our house. Just sayin'.
We're still configuring the site but don't have a final configuration. As with the current community the new community does have the option to earn points with each action. As we get closer to finishing configuration and putting the site live I will share some details.
If there is a decision made to carry over point status levels they may have different tiers and named differently than the current community has. Currently you see Levels that are attained at different point levels. So if you're at Level 10 right now it may not be Level 10 on the new platform if that concept is carried over.
Typical points in communities are assigned based on actions and different actions result in different points. Some actions are physical things (something you authored): writing a blog post or replying to a post. Other actions are more virtual(something you did to something on the site): viewing a post, subscribing to a group, friending someone, bookmarking a post or liking a post. The physical actions usually convert easily in a migration. The virtual actions are usually a little more challenging to move. So when a migration happens the points are usually recalculated based on the physical things that were moved over based on the assigned point value of each item. Some things might have a point value where as other things may not. So giving points away will be pointless because they will be recalculated when we move if actions are assigned points. Similarly the person receiving them on the current community would not retain those points on the new community. At this time, the new community doesn't have a way for members to award other members points in the community.
This will be the 3rd community move since the community began in 2008. Perhaps I'm not understanding what you mean by numerous.
Yes, I haven't provided much detail on the move because we're busy building it so there's not a lot of information to provide and also things can rapidly change. As with the prior migration, we'll communicate in advance if there are things members need to do prior to the migration. I wasn't around with the prior migration from Ning to elgg so I have no idea what the migration was like, however from the clues I've discovered and the comments some of you have shared, that migration was not as smooth and some content was lost and join dates were missing for some people. The migration from elgg to Jive was much smoother. We retained more than 99% of the information from the previous community. With this move we will also migrate as much as possible and try to inform you as best we can ahead of time if there is content that we'll not be able to migrate. Generally speaking all signs at this time point to the content (blogs, discussions, questions, videos, etc) migrating over and there being no need to back anything up. For the most part the profiles will migrate over however some fields in the profiles may need to be set up after the migration is complete. We'll communicate in advance of the move what things from your profile will not move. At this time I know that the Avatar will move over but profile pictures will not likely move over.
My aim with any community move is to make it as painless as possible. Every community platform is different so things will transform in the move. There will be some organizational changes to how the new community is structured. Based on the feedback we've received we're looking to simplify the site more. With the previous migration we consolidated 600 groups down to just over 200. Many of those groups have not been utilized in the past 3 years so we'll work to further clean up the groups. Some groups will remain as they currently are today, others will transform into categories and some will disappear. Groups that will transform into a category will take their content with them. Posts that are located in groups that are going away will not be lost, but the content will be migrated into other general areas of the community.
With any community move there will be changes. Some of those changes result in loss. Some losses don't matter and other losses you miss. But you will often gain some things as well. Some gains won't matter to some people and other people will be excited about them.
As always, I'm always gathering feedback and looking for ways to implement that feedback where it is possible and makes sense within the confines of BecomeAnEx.org and the EX Community. I'm always delighted when I can transform that feedback and implement it into something on the community. We're going to be bringing some things back to the EX Community that were lost when we moved to this current community, so I'm very excited for that. I'll continue to gather feedback and work to implement new things that enhances the community even after we move. I've been very active already conveying feedback I've gathered over the last 5 years here on EX with our new community platform owner so that we can continue to improve the community into the future. They're excited to be working with us to make the EX Community a place that more people want to be.
Mark
EX Community Manager
EX Community Admin Team
won't this the third year this coming January? Do you have any information Mark that you can share on the new platform? Thanks......
