I wouldn't mind if it was implemented. I think it's good to keep the upper levels from being disproportionately populated. It makes the concept more realistic. Thanks to data in an earlier post (++atcroft), I could graph the population of each level. With the current system, the populations drop quite rapidly as the levels increase, except for the overpopulated level 10, and higher than expected populations at levels 5 and 6. With the new proposal, the populations drop rapidly again, but level off fairly quickly around level 5, and then slowly drop as levels increase (except for a little higher than expected populations at levels 6,7,8 and 10). All in all, though, a better distribution, I think.

ysth made a comment about needing 40 levels in the future. Hopefully he was just joking. I'm thinking that it wouldn't be a good idea to keep adding levels; not that many anyway. But I can see the eventual need for some adjustments. Basically, I can see three ways of doing this.

• Keep the proposed number of levels. After a time, they will likely start to get top heavy again. Increase the threshhold for all levels by the same percentage. There might be a problem in that the threshhold to becoming a novice, acolyte, sexton, etc, would all increase also. Maybe not a lot, but it would then take longer to get started up the ladder. Maybe that would be seen as a problem, maybe not. Personally I don't see it as a problem; I moved up the first few levels in a matter of a few days. Stretching that out a bit shouldn't be a problem.

• If that was indeed a problem, it might be solved be keeping the same number of levels, the novice threshhold could remain 20, and the rest could be increased by an exponentially increasing percentage.

• Perhaps a better way would be to every so often add a new level to accomodate the ever higher reaching monks. Hopefully "every so often" could be measured in years. Maybe it would be best to start with less than 22 levels now, to make it easier to add more later. Although I think an even better way would be to go to different levels of saints, as Happy-the-monk suggested. They could be added one at a time, as needed.

Additionally, I agree with Elian's idea to make votes worth less potential XP the higher up you go. I think the value of a saint or other high rank should be based more on technical merit than showing up and voting every day. But, voting is important, and this would allow the higher level monks to continue to leave their mark by voting on quality posts. If you just reduced the number of votes at the higher levels, they couldn't do that.

I don't agree with Elian's idea to allow XP to rot. Once you've "earned" it, it should be your's. His point might be equivalent to "What have you done for us lately?". But if you stop participating, you will be passed up eventually. And if you "earned" your XP with high quality posts, why should you lose your reputation?

I also think grinder's idea to allow you to pick your own title at some level of XP is interesting.

If a poll is eventually run on this, as Tii suggests, I was wondering: Can the polling system ignore AM's? It might even be good to allow the vote only to higher levels, say above ... let's see...my XP=599...level=friar...oh, Friar maybe? Yeah, Friar, that sounds good ;) Seriously, though, for as major of a change as this, more weight should somehow be given to those who have invested more time in the Monestary.

All in all, a very interesting proposal, one that should be seriously and thoughfully considered.

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