What makes an AAC user an "Active Member"?

Thread Starter

tjohnson

Joined Dec 23, 2014
611
I haven't been able to figure out what makes an AAC user an "Active Member." DumboFixer, who has made 219 posts over the past 6 years, is listed as an Active Member. pwdixon has made 319 posts over the past 2.5 years, so he has a greater post frequency than DumboFixer, yet he is only listed as a Member. Since I have made 291 posts over a period of 0.5 years, I have a greater post frequency then both DumboFixer and pwdixon, yet I am not listed as an Active Member either. How does an AAC user attain this status?

(No offense intended to any members mentioned in this post; I'm merely using them as examples.)
 
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tshuck

Joined Oct 18, 2012
3,534
I believe they are simply levels to show how many posts you have on the forums (excluding Off-Topic).

Then there are special groups that are only done by the moderating team/admins.
 

DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
I believe they are simply levels to show how many posts you have on the forums (excluding Off-Topic).
That's a thought. Off-topic posts are not counted as "Messages", but if the site still counts them it may use it to determine the user status. I wonder if 500+ posts (total, including OT) gets you the "Active Member" status?
 

DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
That's a thought. Off-topic posts are not counted as "Messages", but if the site still counts them it may use it to determine the user status. I wonder if 500+ posts (total, including OT) gets you the "Active Member" status?
Scratch that, pwdixon has 322 posts total.
 

JoeJester

Joined Apr 26, 2005
4,390
Most forums use a post count to discriminate between the categories of membership.

It is up to the forum owner to develop their own metrics if they are delving into the a deeper analysis of their members.

This forum, like a lot of Q&A type forums, will have a core group that remains and the vast majority of the users leave once their question has been answered. A couple of years ago, I looked at two forums to get an idea of membership retention. It lead me to internet culture and a host of other metrics. Anyways, in three months time, there were 3008 members visiting AAC. Below is a graph of their membership time. It illustrated the transient nature of the membership, from one post and done to the long term membership.
 

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WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
As a mod, I can tell you that I have absolutely no idea.

There is a baseline based on post count (and I believe it excludes OT forum posts), but there are other categories that appear to be manually assigned (by the admins, I presume).

It was easier to explore this with the old VB software because you could navigate the entire membership listing instead of just the top twenty (or specific members).

There are also identifiable errors in either the forum software or the AAC configurations. The most glaring one is in the Trophy Points calculations. There are a couple of categories that are simply not included in the calculation even though they are specified in the legend. Now, trophy points is a meaningless thing and I wouldn't care if it were eliminated. But even if it is eliminated, the cause of the error should be identified and fixed. If it's a configuration issue with AAC, then that means that the same information is defined in two places and it is inconsistent. That's poor software design (which is not to say that even the best designed software isn't going to have such deficiencies here and there). So that is something that XenForo should make go away so that the information is defined in only one place within the configuration and all uses are keyed to that one definition.
 

Hypatia's Protege

Joined Mar 1, 2015
3,228
I haven't been able to figure out what makes an AAC user an "Active Member." DumboFixer, who has made 219 posts over the past 6 years, is listed as an Active Member. pwdixon has made 319 posts over the past 2.5 years, so he has a greater post frequency than DumboFixer, yet he is only listed as a Member. Since I have made 291 posts over a period of 0.5 years, I have a greater post frequency then both DumboFixer and pwdixon, yet I am not listed as an Active Member either. How does an AAC user attain this status?

(No offense intended to any members mentioned in this post; I'm merely using them as examples.)
FWIW It appears that 'member rank' is weighted by both message count and tenure without regard to posting frequency (e.g. post counts being equal, longer-time members tend to hold higher rank) --- Just an, admittedly cursory, observation... :)

Best regards
HP
 
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JoeJester

Joined Apr 26, 2005
4,390
There are various criteria in the "promotion" from new member ... all the options can be viewed in the manual at https://xenforo.com/help/manual/

All the criteria set by the admin must be met, prior to the "promotion".

I know this does not answer the specific question, but, it does illustrate that time and posts and even a likes to posts ratio could be involved.

Only the admin knows the specific criteria, so if jrap is watching, inquiring minds want to know.
 

BR-549

Joined Sep 22, 2013
4,928
JoeJester,

I have tried several searches on the manual link.

I can find no information on this subject.

What is the proper term for the text under the users name?
 

Thread Starter

tjohnson

Joined Dec 23, 2014
611
I think JoeJester was referring to the section on User Group Promotions: https://xenforo.com/help/user-group-promotions/
However, I don't think that's the applicable section, since it seems to be mainly referring to the permission levels that users have.

I think the applicable section is the one on trophies: https://xenforo.com/help/trophies/
It says:
The user title ladder is related to the number of trophy points accumulated; the more points which are earned, the higher up the ladder they move, gaining the relevant user title as each threshold is passed.
so what I gather from this and what WBahn is saying is that a user's title is based on his trophy points, but not all of the trophy points awarded are listed in the AAC Help (http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/help/trophies).
 

Thread Starter

tjohnson

Joined Dec 23, 2014
611
After looking again at several members' profiles, I'm beginning to wonder if the qualifications for Active Member are either to post 500 messages, or to be a member for 5 years.
 
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