💬 We want to hear from you! Community ranks and recognition feedback

[Lauren_vdv]

Hi everyone!

We’re planning to refresh the Community rank structure, but before moving forward, we wanted to make sure we heard from you. This is after all, your Community so we want to prioritize your voice and perspective with any changes that are made. 

Ranks today

Today, Community ranks consist of both earned and assigned ranks. The earned ranks are based on activity and contributions to the Community, whereas assigned ranks live outside the earned rank structure and are based on a certain role or set of permissions the member holds, such as “Community Manager,” “Staff,” or “Google Developer Expert.” 

Ranks are visible throughout the Community, particularly on your profile page and when you engage in the Community with posts, comments, and events. 

Earned ranks are currently as follows, beginning with “New Member” and progressing to “Participant V.”  

• New Member
• Community Visitor
• Observer
• Explorer
• Participant I
• Participant II
• Participant III
• Participant IV
• Participant V

Badges work in parallel with ranks and are currently awarded based on incremental achievements in the Community, including number of posts, accepted solutions, ideas, comments, and likes received. Badges earned are visible from each member’s profile page.

Reasons for change

Community ranks and badges can help serve a number of purposes, including:

• Encourages and rewards quality contributions

• Indicates level of engagement and expertise, which can help others know how to best respond and communicate with each other

• Helps establish credibility and visibility as a leader

• Brings an element of gamification that helps make Community fun!

We believe our current rank structure can be improved to better meet each of the purposes above. We have some ideas on how to do this, but we want to hear from you… 

What do you think?

Please share your thoughts on one or a few of the questions below. This will be tremendously helpful in ensuring any changes we make are aligned to your wants and needs. 

Of course, free form responses that don’t necessarily relate to a specific question are welcome as well! 

• What do you like or what do you think could be improved about our existing Community ranks and recognition program (i.e. ranks, badges, gamification)?

• What would help motivate you to participate in community activities that help uplevel your rank? (e.g. extrinsic motivators like swag, and/or intrinsic motivators like being helpful and receiving thanks and recognition, or a combination of both)

• If you were to come up with your own rank names for the Google Cloud Community, what would they be? (e.g. member, visitor, contributor, leader, legend, etc.)

• Are there other rank/badge programs you’ve seen or been a part of? What are they and what do you like or dislike about them? 

• Would you be interested in participating in activities such as speaking at a community event, joining a Q&A panel, authoring a community blog, being featured in a member spotlight, etc.?

[Lauren_vdv]

Any thoughts @kim_nilsson, @stevelarsen, @gemma_mcclure2, @dominik, @icrew, @KAM, @CalebSpring, @brian_kim ? We'd love to hear from you! 🙂

[gemma_mcclure2]

Hi @Lauren_vdv 

I love the badge/ rank system really fun and applies mild and healthy competition 😉 I think it would work even better if prizes were given at each stage, starting with something small like a 'Google Pen' and working your way up to something more prestigious... only my opinion though. I think its great 🙂

[Willie_Turney]

@StephenHind @Jan-Carlos 

Any thoughts on this? We'd love to hear from you two as well! 

[StephenHind]

• What do you like or what do you think could be improved about our existing Community ranks and recognition program (i.e. ranks, badges, gamification)?
  Without looking at the list of ranks every time it's nearly impossible to remember what rank is what as the names don't convey any meaning.  You should go with something familiar to everyone like Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond (that may sound very familiar to some 😉
  Gamification can bring overly keen people answering everything but giving no help, so this needs to be a fine balance.

• What would help motivate you to participate in community activities that help uplevel your rank? (e.g. extrinsic motivators like swag, and/or intrinsic motivators like being helpful and receiving thanks and recognition, or a combination of both)
  Receiving thanks for being helpful and an escalation path for issues would help.  Just seeing Googler involvement helps as well as it show that this community is even looked at which is why the previous version didn't really do well: no one will contribute to the community if Google never looks at it; we don't know if Google's looking at it unless Googler's contribute (which has now started but needs to continue and increase).
  Recently there has been a number of non-Google Workspace users trying to get help in the Workspace fora, so you may want to ensure that these users are Workspace users before they can join (most og them have a Gmail address, so should be easy to spot).

• If you were to come up with your own rank names for the Google Cloud Community, what would they be?(e.g. member, visitor, contributor, leader, legend, etc.)
  Clearly I didn't read ahead!  Google already has a well-established ranking system that's not automatic but does depend on participation: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond; but these levels should only be given if someone actually wants to regularly contribute, not to a user who only wants to ask the odd question.

• Are there other rank/badge programs you’ve seen or been a part of? What are they and what do you like or dislike about them? 
  Google Products Experts, formerly Top Contributors, gave great recognition, but completely opaque communication and worrying too much about the feels rather than the facts will always make a communities less useful: most people want unambiguous answers not a response that's overly flowery.

• Would you be interested in participating in activities such as speaking at a community event, joining a Q&A panel, authoring a community blog, being featured in a member spotlight, etc.?
  Can do.

[KAM]

First, I love gamification.

Second, I'd like to see it encourage new users more.  Perhaps only basing the rank on the past 12 months on a rolling basis and perhaps more top ranking for the month.

Third, For prizes, I think it would be really great to have something where people can earn GCP or Workspace credits.  There are a TON of people talking about Legacy accounts and maybe this could tap into that to get more engagement.  Another idea would be earning credits to take some certs from Google like Google Certified Administrator so people could read/use/help and get certified all with just time.  Could really help some people who couldn't do it otherwise.

Fourth, it would be awesome if people who helped could earn points they could spend on Feature Ideas to try and make it more useful to admins, users, and Google.

Fifth, some sort of up and down voting on threads might help too. 

-KAM

[Jan-Carlos]

What do you like or what do you think could be improved about our existing Community ranks and recognition program (i.e. ranks, badges, gamification)?

More ranks! i think that was quite easy to get participant V. I'm quite a competitive person so i like the gamefication system.

What would help motivate you to participate in community activities that help uplevel your rank? (e.g. extrinsic motivators like swag, and/or intrinsic motivators like being helpful and receiving thanks and recognition, or a combination of both)

I really like to help people and at the same time this improve my knowledge on Google platform. it would be great to receive recognition or prizes, like a voucher for a google certification or something like that.

If you were to come up with your own rank names for the Google Cloud Community, what would they be? (e.g. member, visitor, contributor, leader, legend, etc.)

The names above are nice, but i would remove legend.

Visitor > Member > Visitor > Contributor > Leader > Expert

Are there other rank/badge programs you’ve seen or been a part of? What are they and what do you like or dislike about them?

I don't partake on any other rank program, but as I said above, i like this system.

Would you be interested in participating in activities such as speaking at a community event, joining a Q&A panel, authoring a community blog, being featured in a member spotlight, etc.?

I'd love to, but my english is quite broken nowdays hahaha.

[icrew]

I'll say +1 to most of the above. A few additional thoughts:

• What do you like or what do you think could be improved about our existing Community ranks and recognition program (i.e. ranks, badges, gamification)?

Beyond the "Participant V" or whatever, the other parts of the gamification aren't very prominent on the forum. 

I also think that there are additional aspects of the forum that could (maybe???) be gamified, like identifying duplicate threads/feature ideas and suggesting them for consolidation.

• What would help motivate you to participate in community activities that help uplevel your rank? 

Thanks and recognition are great.

I love @KAM 's idea of having it be based only on the last 12 months of activity, not all time.

I don't really need more vendor tchotchkes in my life, to be honest, but those may be motivating for some.

I also love @KAM 's idea about being able to earn Workspace or GCP credits.

There also used to be events--Top Contributor Summits I think they were called--where if you were a TC, you could get invited to MTV  (maybe even all expenses paid? I'm not sure about that as I'm local) to hear from/meet with Googlers and have input into future directions.

More generally, though, having contributions = increased access to and influence with Googlers would be highly motivating, for me at least.

• If you were to come up with your own rank names for the Google Cloud Community, what would they be?(e.g. member, visitor, contributor, leader, legend, etc.)

In the past, there were "Top Contributors" and "Rising Stars" (folks that were close to, but not quite at Top Contributor status). I believe there are also already ranks in the Google Product Forums. Maybe it'd make sense to mirror those here?
I agree with @Jan-Carlos that there need to be more ranks beyond Participant V (or that those ranks need to be harder to achieve). I'm also not clear on which badge(s) "Participant V" status is based. Is it just # of posts, or are there other criteria? If not, maybe there should be other criteria, like receiving a certain percentage or number of likes, or something.

• Are there other rank/badge programs you’ve seen or been a part of? What are they and what do you like or dislike about them? 
  

I was a part of the Google Developer Experts (GDE) program for "Workspace Product" for a while, but it really seemed pointless as we never heard from anyone working on Workspace, the other "tracks" in the program were all pretty hardcore developers, and there were all these requirements to log activity in minute detail and such. I eventually resigned.

• Would you be interested in participating in activities such as speaking at a community event, joining a Q&A panel, authoring a community blog, being featured in a member spotlight, etc.?
  

Sure, though that starts to feel a lot like the GDE program (see above).

[icrew]

@Lauren_vdv : I'm reviving an old thread, but this article just crossed my screen this morning, and it seemed relevant to this discussion: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/29/apple-launches-apple-community-program/

Google used to have a "Top Contributors" program that sounded pretty similar, with in-person summits and so on, but that seems to have disappeared -- or our membership in it disappeared -- at some point among all the platform and personnel changes for GCC.

[Penelope]

I know this post is sort of old but I do wanted to say the Top Contributor program was rebranded and the Google Product Experts who reside over in support.google.com do still exist (I am speaking from personal experience because I was a TC and currently am a Google Product expert for multiple products). Some Google product experts (PEs) probably do still think of themselves as TCs especially the ones who have been around for ages. I believe I have spotted some both former TCs and current PEs in the Google Cloud Community. The PE summits (which is the equivalent to "events--Top Contributor Summits I think they were called--where if you were a TC, you could get invited to MTV") do still exist with airfare and hotel stay paid for. The PEs get invited to specific locations which this year was NYC, Japan, and I don't recall what the third was. 

Just to respond to the overall thread here (so not responding to you, icrew, directly):
Not sure if I am allowed to share PE stuff really here but I will say just from observation, that gamification in the Google support communities hasn't been a good thing. Now I will say that I do love how the Google Cloud Community seems to be very well moderated and I don't see spam really (I have yet to find a place to submit feedback over one thing I have noticed, which wasn't spam related necessarily but more PII related). 
A comment I have in response to "Recently there has been a number of non-Google Workspace users trying to get help in the Workspace fora, so you may want to ensure that these users are Workspace users before they can join (most og them have a Gmail address, so should be easy to spot)." If you do indeed go that way, please let me know since I participate in this community via a personal free Google Account, and I actually enjoy looking at the posts here. To be fair, some of these posts I have brought to the attention of Google Product Experts and the higher up ranks (who are Googlers) and they give me feedback or information I can relay back to the user including that the feedback is being taken into consideration. I actually know some folks who welcome feedback from users and never minded me giving them the feedback from the users.

[icrew]

Thanks @Penelope : In terms of reporting a post (whether for spam or PII or whatever), click on the 3 dots at the upper-right of any post and choose "Report Inappropriate Content":

And yes, things are quite well-moderated here! Props to @Michelle @Lauren_vdv @Willie_Turney @AndrewB @Pratyusha and the rest of the team (I'm sure I'm forgetting someone) for making that happen. It's one of the big reasons I hang out here and don't venture into the public forums...

Cheers,

Ian

[Penelope]

Thanks, @icrew ! That is what I ended up doing to submit feedback because I was wanting to make a recommendation regarding the community guidelines and a trend I was seeing since I didn't think it would be right to use the "community feedback" public section for what I was submitting feedback over since I wanted to post some URLs. 
And kudos to all the Googlers here who makes things happen!!! 

[csgauravkumar]

Hey @Lauren_vdv,

I think the series below can be replaced with some specific keywords:

• Participant I
• Participant II
• Participant III
• Participant IV
• Participant V

The above look too generic in nature. I can suggest taking some time to ponder over this space.

Further, it would be great if Google can conduct community events for the Google Workspace Users who can come and interact on any physical platform. This will be a game changer. For Example, Zoho (https://zoho.com) as a company promotes this and it has helped us a lot more in gaining new experiences which are otherwise missed.

I also believe that there could be a better way of recognising a Community Member who has been contributing in a meaningful way and has shown substantial engagement in the Google Cloud Community. This can be in kind or gifts which will always motivate them to come and share their blog posts as to how Google as a company has helped them scale at large.

Cheers!

@csgauravkumar