Trophy award system & "Dummies" guide to Xenforo?

Niteblade

Member
Can we, as administrators, define the criteria for trophy achievements?
    • What are the criteria categories that can be used for trophies, e.g., post count, the number of likes received, the number of likes given, the age of the forum account? (Is there a comprehensive list that details this?)
    • I would like there to be trophies awarded for post content length -- meaning that the value of content length would be a calculated result after filtering out "stop words" and words that are three characters or less. (In other words, when users post content 50 words or greater, they get +1 . Posted content < 50 words would result in nothing being added.)
    • Is a trophy a static "one-time" event -- meaning that once a trophy is earned, the conditions of possibility leading up to the trophy no longer are counted? If post count led to receiving the reward of a poster's trophy, for example, then the trophy cannot be lost when if the particular user do not post any more?
    • Or is the trophy system also "variable" -- meaning that certain conditions must be met, continually, in order to keep a trophy in possession? For example, a trophy would not be given on post count alone (which is a one time, "meet the threshold" criteria), but would be given on the condition that the user makes at least 10 posts per month -- if the condition is met at any point in time, then award the trophy -- if the condition is not met at any point in time, then remove the trophy).
I'm sure that it can be inferred that I am attempting to adapt the trophy system into a native posting/content rewards system. Trophies can be awarded for an individual unique interaction with the forum, such a giving likes and making posts. And trophies can also be awarded to individual from the larger community, such as the number of likes received.
I suppose what these questions come down to is being able to know the extent that I can interact with the software in a custom manner. For example, can I make certain trophies conditional on group, while at the same time making groups conditional on individual and social performance?
I apologize if this post comes off as confused. Maybe I'm just a little bit confused about Xenforo's power and customization potential.
Thanks!
 
I was doing some reading on the forum regarding group promotions.

I'm still trying to sort it all out in my head. But from my limited point of view, from the way I understand it, trophies and group promotions seem like two sides of the same coin. The logic I envision revolves around the model of (a.) an individual's contribution to his or her community and (b.) the community's evaluation of the individual's contribution.

an individual's contribution to his or her community
  • the number of posts contributed
  • the number of words in the posts (think: one or two word posts like "Me too" or "I agree" versus full blown and fleshed out responses consisting of 50+ words.)
  • the frequency of posting
  • the number of times the like button is used
  • the number of forum referrals made
  • identification and reporting of spam
  • donations
the community's evaluation of the individual's contribution

  • whether or not the post was helpful, on target, and added valuable content to the thread
  • whether or not the post was self-promotion or spammy
  • the number of likes received from various members
  • whether or not posts are falsely identified as spam
Using some comparative statistics, we can determine an individual's placement in relation to his or her peers in the forum. For example, we can determine the amount of deviation an individual's posting frequency is when compared to the larger forum population, we can compare the frequency an individual's use of the like button when compared to the rest of the members in the forum, we can compare how often a user's posts gets identified as spam when compared to the rest of the forum members ...
In other words, rather than creating a trophy system or a group promotion system based on certain binary conditions that can be fudged pr manipulated, I'm looking at having a system in place that evaluates an individual's placement in relation to his or her particular forum community. In this manner, each trophy system is relative to the community that houses it. To this end, developing a trophy framework or a group promotion framework makes more sense than having static milestones, although static milestones have their place too.

I would be happy to design the statistics algorithm (something akin to ANOVA) for evaluating individual performance when compared to the rest of the forum members. I just need access to all the variables, as many as possible, in order to do this. For statistics, variables would need to be either true or false .. or numerical. And then from there, the sky's the limit.
:)
 
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