Although the use of forum ranks can encourage interaction and an increased number of posts as users strive to reach the higher ranks, we need to consider the value these posts will hold.
I feel that the idea of standardised forum rank titles can be flawed in many of the same ways that forum competitions are a bad idea. We are basically encouraging post counts rather than post quality – this can be a mistake.
Many users will want to attain the prestige associated with the higher forum rank titles. Consequently they may end up posting comments with just smileys or ‘lols’ – such useless content can damage the quality of our community, but still reward the poster with an extra notch on their post count.
By customising forum rank titles, we will still be engaging with the members and personalising our community. By doing this manually, we will avoid the potential for low quality posts as users will know they are recognised and rewarded based on their overall contribution to the community rather than their post count.
Those with the highest post counts are not necessarily the most valuable members of our community. The ones we should value the most are the ones that add the highest amount of value.
Custom forum ranks reward the users that we feel deserve to be rewarded. When other members see the potential for being awarded a rank title for their contributions, we will often see them strive to achieve similar recognition.
If our community members know they are likely to be rewarded for specific contributions (such as most welcoming member, most helpful member, etc) others will follow these traits, benefiting our entire community.
Dubai RC 
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