Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

General Discussion

Posted by Aimee Ault
Aimee Ault
29,193 Points

Introducing: New Leaderboards

Hi everyone!

We just released a new feature to help you see, in terms of progress, how you rank in the community, leaderboards! See how you rank for the week, month, or even for all time! Not only that, but you can also see how well you're doing in particular topics!

These boards are kept up-to-date around the clock and you should be able to see yourself advance as you complete quizzes, code challenges, and participate on the forums!

Leaderboard

We're excited to see all of you on the boards, scoring points and badges!

13 Answers

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

It would be neat to add a forum category.

With the ability to sort by, number of:

  • posts
  • replies
  • replies upvoted
  • replies marked as "best answers"
Aimee Ault
Aimee Ault
29,193 Points

Good feedback! We're definitely looking into ways we can expand these boards to filter on other things as well :)

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

+1

hector villasano
hector villasano
12,937 Points

James Barnett your absolutely right. The forums are only helpful when it is easy to find the information your looking for.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

I noticed replies and best answers now show up in the ask someone to answer feature.

Aimee Ault - Any chance this of data coming to the leaderboards?

EDIT: As well as the Homepage?

Anjali Pasupathy
Anjali Pasupathy
28,883 Points

I would also like to see replies, number of up votes, and number of best answers in the Leaderboards, and perhaps on the Home page.

Jason Wiram
Jason Wiram
42,762 Points
Jason Wiram
Jason Wiram
42,762 Points

I'll second this idea. People love acknowledgement. If the leaderboard can measure helpful interaction in quantity (posts) and quality (upvotes) on the forums it will promote better engagement and improve resources to students.

Patryk Nowak
Patryk Nowak
14,103 Points
Patryk Nowak
Patryk Nowak
14,103 Points

I'm still waiting for feature, whch will inform about content added by staff, like here: https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/regex-practicetutorial , where Andrew Chalkley uploaded very useful video.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

This should probably be in it's own thread.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

I noticed that the leaderboard is only viewable my members.

A neat feature would be to add this info to the user's profile.

Imgur

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

+1 Yup, that would be nice :)

Steven Lacks
Steven Lacks
18,214 Points

That would be really cool, I use my profile on my resume so that would help.

Tim McEwan
Tim McEwan
19,537 Points
Tim McEwan
Tim McEwan
19,537 Points

I think its a cool way to push yourself but its really discouraging to me in a way because all the mods and the people that work for Treehouse is all on the leader boards. I have to beat a mod or someone that works at Treehouse that's really discouraging to be fully transparent with you.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

I agree with you that rankings aren't very motivating, personal progress is. So the percentage of points is a good way to measure or perhaps a graph showing the points you've acquired over time.

> the mods and the people that work for Treehouse is all on the leader boards

I pulled up the list of people with 10 most badges only one or 2 of those people are moderators and none are staff.

For the topic filters, it's often a proxy for heavy forum usage. Because there's no limit to the number of points you can get from the forum in a particular category.

However in the top 10 of any given category there's usually only one or 2 mods and maybe one staff member.

Tim McEwan
Tim McEwan
19,537 Points

Hi James, That would be cool to see a graph on what you did over time. For me that was just my initial feeling. I can also see people rushing there knowledge with leaderboards too which can be very bad. Treehouse is an awesome company I love learning. I just am hoping to see my personal progress and not match it up with mods or employees or make it customize in a way so i don't see them. No offense to mods out there.

Steven Lacks
Steven Lacks
18,214 Points
Steven Lacks
Steven Lacks
18,214 Points

Edit: This was meant for Tim. Wrote in the wrong place.

I hope it doesn't discourage anyone. I have a lot of points for me, and it's cool to have another thing to show for the work I put in on all these courses. I like to see where I fall, even though I'm not in the top 10, or even 300. But I will probably look at the weekly leaderboards to make sure I am keeping the progress I am happy with. Falling in the same group I'm always with, as opposed to falling behind.

Good luck and keep it up. Treehouse changed my life. :) (But I'm a treehouse fanboy)

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

> But I will probably look at the weekly leaderboards to make sure I am keeping the progress I am happy with.

A graph of points over time would be a good way to illustrate this

Tim McEwan
Tim McEwan
19,537 Points

Thanks for the reply. I respect your thought and the drive you have to make sure you don't fail. I am not dissing on the leaderboards i think they can totally make it better though which i am sure they will its Treehouse. :)

Steven Lacks
Steven Lacks
18,214 Points

Tim, I'm really sorry if I came of as confrontational. I was trying to be encouraging and offering a "bright side." I am not naturally competitive, and when I first heard about leaderboards, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, there's all the stuff I said above. On the other hand, it might discourage new people. Which makes me think of a suggestion: maybe limit the leader board to exclude staff, but also only publicly rank a top number. Those are people most likely to care anyway.

Sean Gaffney
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Sean Gaffney
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 2,560 Points

Hey Steven, to touch on one point you made, only the top 10 people in each category and topic are viewable by everyone. Then each person is shown their own ranking along with a few other people around them for somewhat better context.

Christopher Warren
Christopher Warren
17,640 Points
Christopher Warren
Christopher Warren
17,640 Points

About time for this feature! It's almost perfect. Remove MODS from the rankings though.

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

Chris Warren Do you have any good reason why you want mods to be removed?

BTW maybe in a few weeks you are going to have a mod status and do you then still want Treehouse to remove you from the Leaderboard?

Sean Gaffney
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Sean Gaffney
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 2,560 Points

Hey Chris and Tim McEwan!

Thanks for your feedback about mods! I just wanted to take a moment to clarify something about moderators here at Treehouse.

Mods don't have a lot of points and badges because they are mods. Mods are chosen to be mods because they have a lot of points and badges and are (more importantly) heavily involved in the forum. We regularly take a look at students to see who is heavily involved and might make a good candidate for a moderator.

All that to say that some moderators are highly ranked in the leaderboards simply because they're good Treehouse students. Mods don't get paid and are students here just like everyone else. They just tend to be more involved with the forum and the learning process here and we don't believe they should get left off the leaderboards because we've designated them with special privileges on the forum.

That said, we very much appreciate your feedback and we don't take anyone's feedback--good or bad--with a grain of salt. Treehouse is a living, breathing thing and we will be continually tweaking the leaderboards and how they work in order to make sure that they fairly represent students' progress and achievements on Treehouse.

Christopher Warren
Christopher Warren
17,640 Points

Great to hear, I take my point back. But seriously, I'm loving the leader boards. It would also be nice to be able see how many points the two people above you have in addition to those after you.

Tim McEwan
Tim McEwan
19,537 Points
Tim McEwan
Tim McEwan
19,537 Points

Sean Gaffney, Thanks for the explanation it was really helpful for me to know that. I won't say any more about the mods and stuff I thought they worked for you but since they don't I will just let it go.

thanks,

Dino Paškvan
PLUS
Dino Paškvan
Courses Plus Student 44,108 Points
Dino Paškvan
Dino Paškvan
Courses Plus Student 44,108 Points

Is it possible for this view (see the screenshot) to prioritise topics where your rank is the highest?

As you can see, mine displays CSS, iOS and Business. CSS, I can understand, I'm currently ranked 2nd on the all time list. Even iOS somewhat makes sense as I'm 8th there. But on the business list, I'm not even in the first 10.

It doesn't show JavaScript where I'm currently ranked 1st.

I think it would make more sense if this screen showed the three topics where you are highest ranked.

screenshot

Aimee Ault
Aimee Ault
29,193 Points

Thanks for pointing that out! I agree with you, it should be ordered in terms of how you're ranked--we've just changed this, so you should be seeing Javascript as your first topic now :)

Dino Paškvan
Dino Paškvan
Courses Plus Student 44,108 Points

Great! :)

Ibram Uppal
Ibram Uppal
26,078 Points
Ibram Uppal
Ibram Uppal
26,078 Points

It would be cool if you got a badge for reaching #1 (or top 3) for the week or month at the end of a week or month respectively.

I think in general the leaderboards are a great motivator, and something I was going ask about. Since the leaderboards have the cumulative totals you've achieved on main boards it motivated me to actually try some of the topics I thought I knew enough about like design to try and gather points quickly. It turns out I had a lot to learn on those subjects and benefited a lot from being motivated to try those courses. This is my first full month on treehouse and I'm really enjoying it! Cannot wait until the games for iOS lessons come out in June (separate topic I know but just thought I'd throw it in to my first post ever here!)

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

> It would be cool if you got a badge for reaching #1 (or top 3) for the week

That sounds pretty neat.

hector villasano
hector villasano
12,937 Points
hector villasano
hector villasano
12,937 Points

!i love it. That page pumps me up

John Rice
John Rice
47,348 Points
John Rice
John Rice
47,348 Points

Would it be possible to make the Leaderboard public? That is to let people who are not members view it? Currently, you have to be a member and logged in to see the Leaderboard. It might lead to new clients or even job offers for the high ranking members on display.

Related to this, could you expand the top 10 list to the top 40 or top 50? I think by only showing the top 10 it causes some members to try to rack up as many badges as quickly as possible in an effect to crack the top 10 to the detriment of their learning. Expanding the top positions that are shown will encourage members to focus more on the learning and less on breaking into the limited amount of top spots that are shown.