Level 75
Is "All Time" the regular leader board?
But yes looks good.
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Sep 19, 2025
25
Level 59
Forum Leaderboard Updates (And Question)
Hey, everybody -
I'm making some updates to the leaderboard section today. In addition to lifetime stats, I'm additionally adding "Monthly" and "Yearly" sorting.
Have a look: https://laracasts.com/discuss/leaderboard?season=month
For each person, it'll list your total XP count, and then the count of new XP for that given season (in blue).
As I implemented this, I realized that the monthly view can become hijacked by newcomers "completing" every video on the site. They show at the top of the list, even though their forum activity is negligible. I'm considering that maybe we should do away with video-based XP entirely.
The current stats - and you may notice that your XP number is slightly lower now - disregards any XP you might have received from watching a video or completing a series.
This isn't definite, but when reviewing the leaderboard, it gets us closer to the people who actually deserve to be on that list.
Any thoughts? I'm working on this for the next couple of days, so it's still a work in progress.
Level 59
Yes.
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Level 63
Excellent idea for the months view and the years view.
And it's effectively a very good idea to forget all XP obtained by completing the videos on the site, it's not reprensentative of the real activity of the users.
Furthermore I think that Lary shouldn't be considered as a user and shouldn't have any rank on the leaderboard.
Level 51
Slightly lower experience points. I primary watch videos on the site and dropped from level 50 to 18 thats not slighty lower thats a huge diff.
What Should the xp represent? Only the Forum or overall usage? Feeling a little “robbed” as a 4 years user here losing more than half my points.
As the videos are the main content, in my ejes, why not get xps for it? I might not understand you idea but doesn’t Sound Logic to me.
You said, hijacking by watching all the videos. It's quite time consuming to watch a lot for videos. Even though you can speed it up. There must be other ways to detect that that devalueating watch videos in generel.
Your site your rules, but feels less valued as a user.
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Level 59
Maybe we should separate the XP into two categories: learning (watching videos) and contribution (forum).
@tomasnorre The issue is people mark videos as completed specifically for the XP points. They may not even watch the video. This means you could register a new account, mark every video as completed, and then be at the top of the leaderboard for the month.
All your XP is still there. It's just the calculation that I'm tinkering with.
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Level 51
Pretty sure I had more than 200.000 xp points now its displays around 90.000.
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Level 59
Right. The current XP doesn’t include viewing-based XP. That’s the thing I’m tinkering with.
I think the solution is to have a total XP, but then also a filtered version that is unique to the forum.
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Level 51
But is it more important to engage via the forum or learning from the video content?
What about removing the complete video button so that people are forced to view it to get the points? Or limit number of "quick complete" per week.
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Level 75
You could leave "all time" everything and the other two just forum. After all the XP for all time is for laracasts in general including videos. Just a suggestion.
Edit:
Or is this already done with the blue text shown?
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Level 59
The blue text represents the XP you earned during that period. If you're on the "month" season, blue is the XP you earned that month only.
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Level 122
Hi Jeffrey
I think perhaps the 'This Month' stats should be rolling 30 days? Else on 2nd October you have top of the leaderboard, someone that only ever wrote one reply and had it marked as best answer.
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Level 73
I agree with this.
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Level 59
Hmm - I don't have a huge opinion here, but I do sort of like the idea that it resets at the beginning of every new month. "I was the top contributor to Laracasts in November" sounds much better than "I was the top contributor in the last 30 days on November 28."
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Level 122
Right. The current XP doesn’t include viewing-based XP. That’s the thing I’m tinkering with.
Perhaps the XP could be based on the percentage of the video watched? You only watch 1%, you only get 1% of the XP for watching (or perhaps banded)
More work, but it solves the mark completed issue, and you already remember progress?
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Level 59
Yeah, that's an option. I'd have to track their time spent watching for every video, but that's doable.
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Level 75
I pointed out a long time ago that user @fylzero has 1,108,360 XP with only 209 best answer awards and 1,536 forum replies.
How is this even possible?
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Level 63
I think that it comes from the series he has completed.
Have a look above ... a part of the discussion here seems to say that it's not normal that a user has a high XP value only with completing series and only a small participation on the forum. And I agree with this.
Level 80
I seem to remember that user and you pointing it out. Think he was doing exactly what @jeffreyway mentioned to “game” things: just marking each and every episode as “watched”, which shot him up the leaderboard in a short amount of time.
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Level 63
You should perhaps add XP when a user close a post by assigning a best answer ... I suggest this because a lot of posts are never closed. It could be a motivation for some OP.
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