Levels are impossible to reach

Has anyone ever reached level 9?

I was excited to build a community on Skool mainly because of the points system and being able to unlock content at different levels. But when I dove into how many points each level required and the ways to earn points it seems almost impossible to achieve the top level (9).

Here is the points levels from what I have seen:

Level 1 - 0 pts

Level 2 - 5 pts

Level 3 - 20 pts

Level 4 - 65 pts

Level 5 - 155 pts

Level 6 - 515 pts

Level 7 - 2015 pts

Level 8 - 8015 pts

Level 9 - 33015 pts

Level 10 - ? Never before seen, but suppose to be one.

Seeing as pretty much every level is about 4x as many points as the previous level, it makes sense that Level 9 is that high. The smaller levels have less of a multiplier and only need roughly 3x as many points as the previous level.

Level 9 is unachievable, even for an admin.

If someone were to achieve level 9 within 5 years of consistent posting/commenting that would mean they would need to average 17 points/day for 5 years straight.

To achieve a level 8, someone would need to average 4 points/day for 5 years.

For instance, Tedd Carr is a Level 6 - Grandmaster with 1530 points. He joined in Feb 2022. So achieved this in 11 months with an average of just over 4 points/day. It will take Tedd another 4 years to achieve Level 8 at this pace. And this is in a community of 9,600 members, which is pretty decent.

Another example is Sid Sahasrabuddhe, who actually works for Skool, is Level 7 - Goat but has 5576 left before reaching Level 8. Sid seems to have joined in Dec 2019, so he has been at this for a little over 2 years.

How does someone get points in order to move up in the ranks?

You need to create a Post or Comment on someone else's post... but you don't get points for that... someone ELSE needs to Like (👍 ) your Post or Comment and you get 1 point for either of those.

I've seen it recommended to put your rewards at levels 3, 5 and 7. So once a member reaches level 7, other than being a helpful person and giving into their habit of posting/commenting, there is no longer any incentive for these top contributors to be a part of the community.

The only way I see people achieving such high ranks of an 8 or 9 is:

1) continue to reward the higher levels (if that is possible or if you are only limited to rewarding certain levels or only certain amount of levels)

2) create a community culture where you get people into a habit or liking every comment/post that they read. This is actually something I do on FB as a habit to mark that I've read it so I don't read duplicate information

3) reward other behaviours or come up with a different points system. 10 points for posting, 2 points for commenting, 1 point for getting a like, etc. Reward other behaviours that lead to an engaged community. The points system right now incentivizes value. Value posts. Value comments. Instead of building a community with conversations and relationships between members, which will drive value posts and comments through the law of reciprocity. Right now, if someone doesn't feel their post or comment will be valuable they may not ask because they won't get the "reward" of a point.

4) allow admins to set their own points values and/or levels. I know that it was set up to be the same across all communities, but not all communities are built the same. Updating this to include other points as mentioned in #3 or allowing the ability to customize points levels would not be hard at all.

I hope that the points and reward system gets some higher attention as it is a unique feature that other community programs do not have and certainly sets Skool apart.

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