Champ › Guides › Points & leaderboard
Points & leaderboard
Points reward the behaviour you want more of. Champ awards them automatically for posting, starting topics, receiving upvotes and completing a profile, and can publish a public leaderboard.
Turning it on#
In the dashboard, go to Points and enable it. Nothing is awarded retroactively in a meaningful sense until the next tally runs, so give it an hour before judging the numbers.
What earns points#
Each of these has its own value, which you set:
| Action | Setting |
|---|---|
| Writing a post | Points for new post |
| Starting a topic | Points for new topic |
| Receiving an upvote | Points for upvote |
| Joining the forum | Points for new users |
| Uploading a custom avatar | Points for custom avatar |
| Setting a signature | Points for signature |
Any of them can be set to zero, which switches that source off.
Choosing the values#
The ratios matter more than the absolute numbers, because the ratios are what people optimise.
- Keep "receiving an upvote" worth more than "writing a post." If posting pays best, you get volume. If being upvoted pays best, you get quality. This is the single most important setting here.
- Keep "starting a topic" close to "writing a post." Making new topics much more valuable produces a forum full of threads with no replies.
- One-off awards — avatar, signature, joining — should be small. They exist to nudge profile completion, not to create a leaderboard of people who filled in a form once.
A workable starting point: post 1, topic 2, upvote 5, joining 5, avatar 5, signature 5. Watch it for a few weeks and adjust.
The leaderboard#
The leaderboard is a public page ranking members by points. Two display settings:
- Username format — a Liquid template controlling how names appear, so you can show nicknames, abbreviated names, or whatever suits your community's privacy expectations.
- Show avatars — whether member avatars appear alongside the ranking.
Note A leaderboard is a commitment. It is highly motivating for the ten people at the top and invisible to everyone else, and taking it away later annoys exactly the members you most want to keep. Decide before you launch it, not after.
Points and moderation#
Points make spam more attractive, because they make posting visibly rewarding. If you enable points on a public forum, make sure the spam defences are on too — particularly the minimum interval between posts.
Points follow deletions: removing a spammer's posts removes the points those posts earned.