Are You the Community's Next Rising Star?

You may have noticed ranks (Creator, Window Shopper, etc) across the boards, blogs, and profiles of Community users. The idea behind the ranking system is that we wanted a way to acknowledge our active members by conveying a Community-wide title and reward them with additional capabilities.

Here’s a breakdown of the ranks you can currently find in the Community, and the privileges that accompany them:

• Guests are unregistered users who may browse or search the boards for information.
• Upon registering in the Community, the first rank a user obtains is Window Shopper. As registered users, Window Shoppers can post or reply to comments, give/receive Kudos, and sign up for email-notifications.
• After spending some time in the Community, Window Shoppers are promoted to Performer status. To obtain this rank, a user must have logged in at least twice and spent a total of 50 minutes in the Community. Performers have the same posting rights as Window Shoppers.

• Rising Stars must log in 20 times for a minimum of 100 minutes. Rising Stars share the same rights that Performers and Window Shoppers do.
• Creators have additional privileges that give them the ability to create forum threads and ideas. Creators carry a kudos weight of 2 – meaning, that if they “Kudos” a post, the number in the box will increase by 2, instead of 1 (Rising Stars, Performers, and Window Shoppers all carry a Kudos weight of 1). To obtain Creator status, a user will have posted 10 times for a minimum of 50 minutes.
• An active Creator becomes a Contributor after 50 posts, 10 log-ins, and a minimum of 100 minutes. Contributors also carry a Kudos weight of 2.
• The VIP rank belongs exclusively to bloggers who were active in the Community’s initial launch. You’ll see names like Joel Libava (the Franchise King), Llloyd Lemons (MicroBusiness Advisor) and Dawn Rivers Baker (the Journal Blog) holding the VIP rank, which carries a Kudos weight of 3.
• When the Community deems an active user’s comments worthy of Kudos, the user may be promoted to an MVP status. The user must have a minimum of 500 posts in addition to 1000 minutes and 50 log-ins.

  The following Roles are assigned by the Community Administrator:

• Moderator – Moderators are members of the Business.gov Community that facilitate conversation and monitor content within the Community, according to the Code of Conduct.
• Blog Moderator – edits and reviews the Community blogs for quality/abuse
• Blog Authors – write and research content for one or more of the four Community blogs. Guest Blog authors are users that are not moderators but contribute to authoring blog content.
• Administrator – assigned to two members of the Business.gov team that serve as Community Points-of-Contact, promote users to new ranks, and remove abusive posts.

The Community Forum provides a place for all members, regardless of rank, to share ideas, questions, and experiences. All of our members are essential to the Community’s success, and we encourage you visit often and participate.

As active members share more and more experiences and information, the amount of relevant, useful data in the Community multiplies. Moderators work to verify the information quality of these posts so the Community can feel secure with the given advice. In the end, though, advice from anyone in the Community, regardless of rank, is not meant to replace that of legal counsel.