1. It is extremal illogical to have 7 ranks whose aggregate has under 10 total users. It is even more ridiculous to have 5 ranks, completely devoid of a user who has achieved the status without ill gotten exp.


2. It is laughable that before 3k exp constituted Saint, and now the highest sizable rank is Bishop (40k exp) with only 6 having this label, and they are only halfway to their previous saintly rank


3. The term saint, is often used to establish stature, it was a well known term in the perl community and by stripping it of its previous meaning you require that people build name recognition for the other more esoteric terms.


4. A more thoughtful system would have been backwards compatible/a superset of the old established naming convention and would have granted ranks above Saint, possibly in the form of a surnames eg. 'Saint of Syntax' etc. This would allow Saints to identify with each other.


5. There was no forum or poll that allowed the users to vote on this decision.


6. Oblivious to the fact that Perlmonks is five years old, and none has reached 80k xp, the current saint level, the forces from above have lessened the flow of exp. How is someone to reach 80k xp when only a negligible few have reached the half way point, and now there is even less xp than before. Or, is one to ignore the ranking system entirely? In which case, why change something that had a purpose?

Update:

I would usually make this as another reply; but, in light of the fact that would just give you another opportunity to downvote because of dissension I'll elaborate here:

If 33,874 have never achieved 9k exp, and only 79 have 9k+ exp, than how reasonable is 10 levels, over one third of the possible 28 levels to be allocated to those monks? And, at that the last 7 levels move up in 10k xp increments. There is more experience to one of those levels than 99.76% of the user-base currently has. So, what utility do these levels serve in this "game." The answer is they don't. If you want an unreasonable expectation you could easily set one for yourself, how about we add another 15 levels on top of the preexisting 28 and make them 100k xp increments? And, we can make it such that no single node can receive over .05 xp? It is silly.

Here is a more reasonable suggestion:

1. Make each rank after 3k exp in 1k xp increments. 3000 is achieved at level 13, with 28 levels that would mean that the maximum of level 28 would require (3000+15*1k) or 18k xp. This would give a top rank that would achievable for some degree of the term. It would allow 20-31 people to identify with that rank, and it would make the trip there much more bearable.


2. Consider implementing a Saint + surname


3. If you want other ranks/titles after/besides the level 18 Saint, make them based on non-xp things, such as: A) granting the title of Pope to whomever has the max exp when the fairy does her business, B) granting the title of Cardinal Saint to the 10 next below him C) Granting titles like Most Active Saint of Yr.


4. To expand, here is an idea: Query for all nodes of the prior year, take the top .01% and save the exp in a temp var. Any new node that achives a greater ammount of positive exp, could be called "Blessed". Tally for each monk the amount of 'Blessed Nodes' that they have authored, make note of them in the homenodes, and index them much like the current "Best Nodes Of The Year" (which doesn't really fit with the monastery theme).

etc... There are lots of ways to make a system useful, I just fail to see how this is a reasonable way of doing it.