Who has the most points in the community and who is the fastest person to Level 10, just curious.

How quickly a person can achieve Level 10 has no bearing on anything. Literally, nothing. There's no prize or reward of any kind. The only thing a higher level conveys is a given person has been here long enough to get there. And more importantly, has provided useful and helpful information to earn those points.

The members who have been here the longest have seen this happen over and over. And that's when newer users try to make some sort of self-imposed contest at getting to Level 10 as fast as possible. They end up burning out as they realize it's, a) going to take a long time (because you very often don't get any points where you deserve them) and, b) all you get for your efforts is another dot by your name.

I've been a member since 2001, still haven't made Level 10, and don't care if I ever do. The people who last the longest are those who don't give a hoot about points. The entire purpose of the forum is for users to help each other. That's really all there is to give or gain.

Here's a list of the top 10 contributors by points on June 1, 2024:

Rank Username Points Joined

1 Niel 727,757 Mar 2001

2 Eric Root 684,129 Sep 2012

3 FoxFifth 469,431 Sep 2010

4 Limnos 411,457 Oct 2004

5 SravanKrA 411,356

6 Kappy 361,765 Oct 2001

7 King_Penguin 334,156 Sep 2010

8 LotusPilot 282,850

9 turingtest2 273,033 Oct 2007

10 sberman 264,561 Mar 2008

Some of those contributors are no longer with us (some are deceased).

The points system has changed multiple times in the past. I believe in the early days it was contributors awarding a fixed number of daily (?) points they had to other contributors. In 2009/2010 it changed to only the starter of a thread (OP) being able to award points to up to 3 replies (10 for a "solved" and two 5-point "helpful"). For a while it was was the OP points system only, then in 2015 they added in the "Apple Recommends" system where there was a team of Apple staff who would evaluate the replies to a thread and optionally award a single (on the English language community) 7-point Recommends to what they thought was the best reply that hadn't already been marked by an OP (now sometimes a ghost of this is seen as a "top-ranking reply" which has received no upvotes). That went on for about 7 years or so, then 2 years ago they tweaked the Recommends criteria and Recommends dropped by about 40% (personal evaluation). A year later (last October) they dropped Recommends entirely and a month later they dropped OP points too and transitioned to the upvote system. Since OPs are not terribly good about recognizing posts, the Recommends system was when many users were able to gain points relatively rapidly. Of course you had to post relatively good replies (and be the first to do so), but if you did that then they would frequently get Recommended. Upvotes has the advantage that anybody can upvote, but frankly many people do not bother to upvote, and now you need to get multiple upvotes to get the points that you used to be able to get with a single recognition by an OP or a Recommends. It took me 5 years to get to level 6, and another 9 to get to Level 10. That was before Recommends and mostly during the time when there was no OP points either. During the 7-year Recommends era I was able to get 4 times as many points as I had gotten the previous 14 years. Of course my skill in finding solutions had improved greatly too and honestly I spent many hours per day on ASC. I might participate in a hundred or more threads in one day. In terms of getting daily points, I'd say we are back to where it was 20 years ago. If your goal is reaching Level 10 then this is probably a very lean period to want to make that your objective. There have been other changes to the forum recently (some forums have seen a large drop in questions asked) which mean I am not making as many posts as I used to, but I still contribute even though the points return has dropped a lot.

No, not censored, just not available. Though even that isn't necessarily true.

The blue question mark in a box is simply Safari's way of saying, "I can't find the image that's supposed to be here."

And on these forums, it very, very likely is there, but the forum software is glitching. It just does that every so often. What you'll randomly see disappear the most are the large forum icons at the top left of the those pages. Such as this Sonoma icon:

macOS Sonoma - Apple Community

They'll just blank out to the question mark for no apparent reason. The easy fix is to have developer mode turned on in Safari's preferences. Then you can just hit Command+Option+E to clear Safari's cache and reload the page.

… the most points in the community

There are a few (2?) users that have a big leap over everyone else. Like in the 700,000 points range. That was the milestone per 2023/02.

… the fastest person to Level 10.

Apple has been tweaking the point system over the years. So that is not really comparable in a fair way. What was possible 3 years ago, is different from what is possible now. We’re all somewhat shaped by the circumstances of our time. I haven’t seen statistics on your second question, but the forum administrators would have access to such details, if they were to decide to analyze that, and share with the Community, which probably won’t happen for mentioned reason.

MrHoffman wrote:

There are level 10s posting good answers too, and some answers not so good.

Sometimes from the same person. I've made some doozies of mistakes. I try to take the corrections with grace and civility and learn from them.

Same as happens with level 1. Where all the level 10s once started, if the L10s involved even remember that far back. 🤭

Remember back twenty years? Ha!

Yes, I understood that. I was just explaining a handful of things you'll see the longer you participate.

There was one user here about, oh, five years ago now who bulldozed their way to Level 10 by being here almost every waking moment of their day. This person hit Level 10, was around for no more than a week after that, then disappeared and has never returned.

I don't know if they were expecting Apple to give them a Mac or what. But either they had achieved their only objective and then left, or they were expecting some sort of reward. And when they didn't happen, they left.

Either way, the point I was making is the best users are those who are here to help where they can. Not how often, or by answering as many posts as possible.

I have seen contributors quit at Level 4, Level 7 and Level 10 (they are still alive), while others eventually pass away.

I raced to Level 9 and got tired.

I’m now doing this part-time and earn an average of a few points per week.

I used to post every waking hour, but not anymore!

If you wish to chase points, please don’t brag about it because competition leads to insults and moderation.

I hope you don’t quit, but I sincerely miss some of my other teammates here. 😥

Across all levels, there are probably roughly a hundred people actively replying to questions around here, and accumulating internet points for their efforts.

Apple has tweaked their gamification regime at various points 😉 over the years too, to encourage behaviors they want, and to discourage those they don’t. Due to these changes, paths some once used to dash to higher levels are unavailable in more recent points regimes.

There are level 10s posting good answers too, and some answers not so good. Same as happens with level 1. Where all the level 10s once started, if the L10s involved even remember that far back. 🤭

If and when and how you choose to get to level 10 will be different than the journeys of others. Much like life itself.

For those that have not seen it recently: Share what you know and get recognized - Apple Support

Zachyy wrote:

Also, do higher level contributors get less replying restrictions, I tend to hit a replying limit often and wonder since you guys reply to so many more posts and get so many more responses.

Yes, the posting restrictions should go away at level 2 and up.

Zachyy wrote:

Ohh that’s really helpful, no wonder I haven’t been getting replies, got anything better to recommend?

That was a reference to fewer people posting replies to days-old threads.

Answering those threads will have fewer folks posting replies, as compared with just-posted questions.

Depending on your areas of expertise, there are communities with lower posting traffic, as well.

An interesting quirk of the current system is deceased posters can still get points🥴

Sometimes I listen to music while participating to get me in the groove.

Hopefully, you also have a similar strategy. 🙂‍↔️ 🎶

I would say it's pretty unlikely you would have figured out who I was referring to. Heck, even I don't remember their user name. It was too long ago now, and not worth committing to memory.

I think it's wonderful that you're so enthused about helping others!:)

https://samsoft.org.uk/leaderboard.html

Best of luck my friend!:)