Ningin Upgrades Phase 5: EXP System

I feel like this phase is the one that’s long overdue. The EXP system, sometimes also called our reputation or reward system, is basically just that, a means of keeping track of your reputation here on Ningin and also a means of rewarding you. We ended up calling it EXP because it’s very much akin to experience points in video games and because it’s just short to say and type. Plus, I think most people just know what EXP is when you say it unless you never once played video games in your life.

So what’s the goal/point of our EXP system? I’ve always felt that it was important to recognize who the most active people are in a community like Ningin. These people are the ones that drive Ningin’s growth. So naturally we want to reward their efforts by not only recognizing the things they’ve done but physically reward them as well.

Hows does EXP work? Our EXP system is divided into three areas.

The first is call levels. (Yes, we were heavily influenced by RPG games.) It’s a sum total of all the things you do on this site, comment on a blog post, create a forum topic, upload a profile photo, make a friend, and send someone a private message. When I tell you that everything gets counted, I mean little thing as well. When you click on an outgoing link in Social News, when you watch a video on our site, and the list goes on.

It’s not just about quantity either. Ningin moderators will also track quality responses and interesting topics with a lot of responses. Those will naturally be worth more. You don’t need to know them all since everything is getting recorded as part of your level scoring. The levels go on indefinitely so unlike some RPGs, there is no cap on how high you can go.

Second part is call Pins. This was inspired by a few things, New York Anime Festival and Boy Scout badges, and various other games. Pins are one time unique awards for participating in special events on Ningin and attending a real life Ningin event. Those that have participated in our various Wonder Girls contests get the following Wonder Girls pins:

We also give out pins for comments in specific threads, like those from our various Blog specials, 8 Days of Anime, End of the Year 2008, the many interviews we do and you get the picture. In general, we’re going to have pins for various trivia and smaller contests that we’re going to start doing very soon. So what I’m saying is, there’s gonna be tons of pins for lots of different things.

The final part is rewards. Just as the name suggest, we’ve been securing various deals and sponsorships to offer you prizes for all the things you do on Ningin. We plan to give out things like a Nintendo DS, DVDs, albums, posters, etc. to the top users every month. I’ll get into more detail about these monthly contests later. I think we would even go so far as to hire and pay people who are especially helpful to Ningin. I would suggest trying to start scoring points now by commenting on this blog post =)

Some notes. This system is very much new and I guess you would say “in beta” even though I dislike that word. We’ve only been tracking for the past few months and haven’t gotten around to finishing all the pins from the archive contests. Naturally you need to be a registered member of Ningin and logged in to earn points toward everything.

In case you haven’t noticed, our Community Page is becoming more of a community page showing the top 10 users for each month and week.

Also everyone please thank Lan for working so hard to make these pins! You might get points for that too lol!