Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings

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The TechNet Wiki Community Council is a small group of members from both Microsoft and the community. I’m one of the six non-MS members, and the essential task of its members is to “make TechNet Wiki” better.

One of the topics we’ve been playing around with is the introduction of a new Wiki Ninja belt ranking. There are people working really hard on creating, editing, and translating Wiki pages, and although there’s some recognition in the form of personal profile stats, but I think it could be better and more fun.

In essence, the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings is a reward system dedicated to TechNet Wiki. It’s based on a martial arts belt hierarchy where you can work your way up from a white belt ninja to a black belt ninja, move on to a true master, until you finally become a legendary wiki ninja.

We’ve been toying around with the various rankings that can be achieved, and while you progress thru the ninja ranks, for fun, you’ll get all kinds of really great advice, such as this piece of advice: "Remember, once, I was where you are now. It's just that I didn't stay there for long."

For more fun, there are all sorts of prizes you can win. In essence, these rewards shouldn’t cost too much money, therefore we’ve issued a disclaimer clearly stating that “All rewards are subject to get lamer at any time”.

So far, a lot of the rewards have to do with extra attention you’re getting, such as a dedicated Wiki Ninja blog post, tweet, or interview. Those are valuable prizes in itself, but we’re also trying to introduce some cool material prizes, such as Wiki Ninja stickers, MS mugs, MS books, Wiki Ninja stick figures and sculptures, T-shirts. Then, there’s a category where we’re trying to get the kind of prizes that boost your resume, such as getting an MCC reward in recognition of your TechNet Wiki accomplishments or being featured in TechNet magazine!

There’s no doubt we’re still in the experimenting phase of this ranking mechanism, but the current state of affairs is that the ranking mechanism is reasonably well thought-out, and we could definitely use some input.

I encourage you all to come take a look at  https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/16313.wiki-ninja-belt-rankings.aspx and provide some input!