BPL RANK

LOL, just try letting your subscription lapse — your ranking will drop to a mere fraction 0.xx. You can post a hundred post every day and never get anywhere near a 1.

The ranking is a joke, and after a while, not even kinda fun to watch. Totally meaningless due to some funky algorithm that places BPL subscriptions far, far above all else. Luckily, it's also harmless.

Hmmm. I'd forgotten all about it but after you mentioned it I thought I'd take a look.
I think mine went down. :-)

I also bought the dyneema air cord on BPL instead of the nano one – rank went down by 0.2 right away. Penalty for choosing something heavier. :-)

So the ranking system is a big joke!! Then what's the point to have it anyways? I actually thought I was doing some good-giving advice and such. Waste of time-WOT. What abou the community gear list? WOT
Goodluck people.

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Hey Dave, Thanks for the pep talk- I guess I will just keep at it and enjoy all the informative forums.

Yup — just enjoy the forums.

I thought it had something to do with your credit rating?

Every time my ranking gets to 10 I get a free Ti spork and then it starts again from zero.
Franco

LOL, in your dreams, Franco. :)

Hey BPL Staff, I just bought MPI fuel tabs x2, a journal, aquamira and Air Core Pro. Is my rank going to go up?

I have no actual knowledge on this but perhaps the methodology is kept under wraps so that members cannot finagle the system. I also think it makes the whole idea more interesting being that we are not sure what's driving it.

I think it's well known that the first number is how many years you have subscribed to BPL. So if that drives the whole number system, the other two numbers are meaningless if trying to "finagle" the system.

I know that the enigma of the BPL ranking system has lost its allure now that it's only listed next to reviews, but I've noticed something recently – Roger Caffin's BPL rank of 6.20 appears to be converging on Ryan Jordan's rank of 6.34. Assuming the regularity of one's posts has something to do with it, Roger's role as forum moderator would suggest that this trend will continue. What if Roger overtakes Ryan? Y2K meltdown? End of Days? Will BPL cease to be in a swift puff of ultralight smoke, cuben fiber and titanium? Should Roger be stopped? Can he be stopped?

Devin wrote: "Roger Caffin's BPL rank of 6.20 appears to be converging on Ryan Jordan's rank of 6.34."

Man, maybe someone should be making book on this.

Wait . . yes . . . I can see it clearly now, the entire BPL ranking system has always just been an elaborate illegal backroom gambling scheme. Are the rumours linking the current international financial situation to excessive institutional speculation on BPL ranking futures true? Can congressional hearings be far behind? Is there a way I can apply for a government secured financial bailout so that I can buy more gear? Stay tuned.

LIBERTAS+PAX PACIS

lol!

What happened to the BPL Ranks? If one views their profile, it is no longer there. Was there an announcement about this? I can't search and find it. URL?

Thanks!

Roleigh,
You can still see your rank by clicking on your name at the top of the page by the Log In area. I think they took that off peoples' profiles the day I became a member.

But it seems your own rank is the only one you can see. I completely understand some peoples' aversion to the BPL rank, but it was kinda fun just to see what the algorithm would do from one week to the next….oh well

Did they do this without an annoucement? If nobody can see someone's rank, what is the purpose of it anymore?

I preferred the way things were a few months ago. I know if you lapsed your subscription, it got hosed. It would have been nice to allow a "re-instatement" manually of the rank or something, but otherwise, it did give an indicator to newcomers of how long a person's been a BPL participant.

When I first came to BPL about a year and a half ago, I liked being able to see who might be worth their stuff by their rank. I know in many ways the rank doesn't mean anything, but it was a place to start at least. I DO think BPL should put a "Member Since MM/DD/YY" or "Guest Since MM/DD/YY" under people's name.

Although it takes a few extra steps, I just look at the Profile page to see the number of posts, and divide folks into New or Established. By the time they are Established I know what to expect. Noobs get a little skepticism, but not much. I try to consider words and tone first, without the influence of a number (or a letter).

Aside from time on the forum, and frequency of posting, I think anything else is pretty soft, so no big deal to lose it.

The ranks are a total farce, and after much complaining, BPL relegated them to the individual member profile pages a few years back.

Case in point — my "rank" was a 3.6 (or something like that). Of that, a full 3.0 was simply due to paying for annual membership! Now that I've let mine expire, I'm back to 'mere fraction'. When a whopping 80+ percent of the score is based on whether you have a subscription or not, the score is obviously useless — or worse than useless.

I wonder why so much of the rank was based upon membership? Encourage more people to become a member?

Face it – some of us are more rank than others…
:-)

Cheers