Get ready! New and improved community ranks and badges are coming April 5th

[Lauren_vdv]

Hey everyone, get ready for an exciting evolution to our Google Cloud Community! 

Based on your valuable feedback, we’re revamping and revitalizing the community’s ranking system and badges, going into effect on April 5th. 

Community email notifications will be paused on April 5th between 5AM and 12PM PT as we make these updates, but you will still be able to use the Community as usual. 

Why the change?

We heard that you want a community ranking system that recognizes the quality of your contributions, not just the quantity. You want clearer naming conventions and visual representations of ranks so you can quickly see where someone falls in the ranking structure. You also wouldn’t mind a few more rungs to climb on the ranking ladder. 

We hear you! Here’s what we’re doing about it.

What’s changing? 

• Quality over quantity: The new ranking system will place greater emphasis on the value and impact of your contributions across the community, not just the number.
• Clearer climbing: Our new rank names will be intuitive and easier to quickly understand where you and other members land in the ranks. We’re also adding visual elements to make it even easier to see your progress at each step along the way.
• Reach new heights: We’re adding more ranks, which means more space for you to climb and stand out for your community contributions. 

We believe this new ranking system will:

• Help motivate us to share our best, knowing quality contributions are being recognized
• Make recognition easier, with clearer ranks and visuals to help everyone better understand and appreciate each other’s contributions
• Create a more inclusive and dare we say, fun! community with opportunities and space for everyone to grow and be recognized 

Plus, as an added bonus, we'll be updating the look and feel of our community badges... get a sneak peak from the image below!

What’s not changing?

While we're updating the ranking structure and the look of our badges, not everything is changing.

• You can continue to contribute and engage with the community in a number of ways, including creating new posts, answering questions and authoring solutions, giving and receiving kudos ("likes"), and signing up for events.
• You'll still retain all the numbers you've reached so far from your Community contributions (e.g. if you've earned 10 Authored Solutions, you'll still have 10 Authored Solutions when the new ranking structure/badges are launched).

We'll also keep a focus on the following foundations of the Community:

• Providing a space to receive quality, timely, and helpful responses to Community member questions
• Adhering to our community guidelines
• Listening to your feedback

In the meantime, keep on sharing your knowledge, answering questions, and helping others - we can’t wait to see you climb the new ranks and reach new heights in the cloud!

Please note that when we make the change, you may receive notifications regarding your new rank and/or badges. You can always manage notifications and subscriptions by following the instructions in our support article here. 

The Google Cloud Community Team

[SkrOYC]

Would've loved to see this 4 years ago when my interest in AppSheet would overcome my dislike for this community platform. Today I'm thankful that this community is not my main focus anymore.

In any case, I know how negative this is for whoever is behind the upgrades, but you have to keep in mind that no matter what you have done, Discourse is still 3-5 steps ahead, as always has been

[hien_nguyen]

We don't need a new version for this community. What we truly need is for the development team to take care of things and for there to be more active feedback from the community

[Rifad]

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@hien_nguyen wrote:

active feedback

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Everything has become so PASSIVE, it's like a snooze fest. Like someone said:

"Google has unarguably antiquated internal processes. It is almost as though the company is stuck in a time warp from two decades ago, with waterfall planning processes. If all the senior managers in a team spend one month in every six planning, and one month goes on vacations and one month goes doing performance reviews, there’s suddenly just about enough time to do a reorg and change in strategy once a year, right? Nothing gets done, no problem, no risk — hand out the promos and bonuses and keep going."

 Google has unarguably antiquated internal processes. It is almost as though the company is stuck in ... 

[Rifad]

Honest feedback: This Looks really UGLY to me. The person responsible for this definitely needs to step up their game. Did anyone else notice how poorly designed this was in team before deploying ?
Feel free to use these for some creative inspiration at no cost! https://www.figma.com/community
https://dribbble.com/following

[peterson]

And the best part is that the post says "We heard you..." Who is the one, who wanted this? Lol. 

This is kinda funny you know. Because we have been dying to make our apps look more attractive and add external features to that.