Two ranks: Community Impact and Total.
The leaderboard ranks folks two ways. The default is Community Impact. You can switch to the Total ranking using the "All Time (Total)" tab.
Community Impact is the rank for folks who do real WordPress contribution AND engage with this community. It weights wp.org work (team memberships, adoption of your plugins and themes, recognized contributor badges) alongside on-site quality signals (Verified and Expert badges, other WPFolks badges, shipped outcomes, distinct folks who upvoted your work). Bulk-importing snippets or videos to farm score does not move this number. Real wp.org work always counts something (a 30 percent baseline), and unlocks fully as you participate here.
Total is the on-site activity rank. Every scoring event you trigger here adds to it: submissions, feed posts, attended events, reviews, certifications, every shipped outcome. It's the right rank for tracking your day-to-day participation. Wp.org credit is capped on Total so a wp.org legend can't dominate from outside contribution alone.
Hover the score on the leaderboard to see both numbers side by side.
How the Community Impact rank is built.
Community Impact rewards folks who do real WordPress work AND show up here. It weights wp.org work (team membership, adoption of your plugins and themes, recognized contributor badges) alongside on-site quality signals (identity badges, shipped ideas and roadmap items, distinct folks who upvoted your work). It does not reward posting volume. A plugin author with 100K real-user installs ranks above a folk who bulk-imported 50 snippets nobody upvoted.
Wp.org credit scales with on-site activity. Real WordPress work always counts something here (a baseline 30 percent of your wp.org credit is granted regardless), and the rest unlocks as you participate. Verifying your profile gets you off the floor; combining that with WPFolks badges, shipped ideas or roadmap items, and earning upvotes from other folks unlocks full credit. The intent is simple: this is the rank for folks who contribute to WordPress AND engage with this community. A wp.org legend who never participates here can still appear on the board, just not above active community members.
Values below are live from the codebase.
WP.org team membership (combined cap 250)
WP.org adoption (sqrt-scaled, cap 800)
WPFolks badges
Folks Academy
WordCamp & community speaking
Shipped outcomes (capped)
Engagement from other folks (capped)
Penalties (mild)
Theoretical maximum from Community Impact: roughly 2,200 points if a folk hits every visible ceiling at once (Core team, Core Contributor flag, full adoption cap, both identity badges, Academy Legend + 10 hosted sessions, 5 WordCamp talks, both shipped caps, full upvoter cap). In practice, the leaderboard is competitive across the 300 to 1,200 range.
How the Total rank is built.
The Total rank is the running sum of every scoring event ever credited to a folk. Two rules shape it: on-site activity is largely uncapped (every submission, every feed post, every certification, every event check-in counts), and external (wp.org) signals are bounded so a folk can't dominate from outside contribution alone.
Some signals appear in both the Community Impact and Total tables (wp.org plugins, badges, shipped outcomes). That's intentional. Each rank scores those actions with its own weights and caps, so you'll see the same plugin earn different point values under each rank.
Live values straight from the codebase. If a number changes, this page changes with it.
Identity
WP.org footprint (capped)
Certifications
On-site submissions (uncapped)
Submission outcomes (uncapped)
Folks TV: creating and recognition
Folks TV: participation (uncapped)
Referrals (capped on points, uncapped on tier badges)
Community activity (mostly uncapped)
Internal badges (one-time)
How your score updates.
- Most events update your score the moment they happen. A submission lands, a vote comes in, an event check-in hits the table, you see the update.
- A reconciler runs every 5 minutes and again every hour as a safety net. If a hook ever misfires, the next pass picks it up.
- Items submitted as Pending only score when an admin approves them. The submission alone does not credit points.
- Day-to-day, Total scores only move up. Live data drift (a plugin install count dropping, a profile field clearing) does not remove credit. Two exceptions: an admin revert (logged in the audit trail), and a scoring-algorithm update. When the points-per-action values change, past events get retroactively repriced so every folk is scored under the same rules. Community Impact, by contrast, is computed live from current state every hour, so it can move down too (for example, the activity multiplier rebalances if your on-site engagement changes, or a cap is added).
How the two ranks are stored.
Total is ledger-based. Every point added to your Total writes one row to an append-only ledger. Your Total is the sum of those rows. Rows are never deleted, only compensated by reverts (which write a negative row pointing back at the original). Nothing happens silently, and the audit trail stays intact when an admin needs to correct an error.
Community Impact is state-based. Community Impact is computed live from your current state (badges held, plugins/themes published, distinct upvoters, shipped outcomes, etc.) every hour. It does not write to the ledger. When the formula updates, every folk is rescored under the same rules on the next pass. There is no per-event row to revert; if something looks wrong, the fix is in the formula or in the underlying data.
Who can change your score.
- The system, automatically, when you do something that the registry knows about. This is the bulk of every score on the board.
- An admin, manually, in two cases: a one-off grant (recognising work the system cannot detect, like reporting a security issue) or a revert (correcting a wrongly-fired event).
- Nothing else. You cannot self-credit, and there is no payment path to points.
Common questions.
What's the difference between Community Impact and Total? +
Two different questions, two different ranks. Community Impact asks: how much real WordPress contribution does this folk have, both on wp.org and on this site? It weights quality signals and discounts wp.org credit if you don't participate here at all. Total asks: how much activity does this folk have on the site overall? Every action you take here counts (uncapped), with wp.org credit bounded at the top. Use Community Impact to find folks doing the deepest WordPress work; use Total to track your day-to-day momentum on this site.
Why is my Community Impact lower than I expect, even though I have a strong wp.org footprint? +
Community Impact applies an activity multiplier to your wp.org credit. With zero on-site activity, your wp.org sub-score is granted at 30 percent. The multiplier scales up from there based on how much you contribute on this site (identity badges, shipped ideas and roadmap items, WordCamp talks, distinct folks who upvoted your work). Verifying your profile is a good first step but is not enough on its own to unlock full credit. The intent is to reward folks who do real WordPress work and also genuinely engage with the community here.
I submitted a plugin / job / event two days ago and don't see points yet. +
Submissions go in as Pending until an admin approves them. The points fire on approval, not on submit. If approval is taking too long, ping support.
Can my score ever go down? +
For Total: yes, in two cases. An admin revert (correcting a wrongly fired event, logged in the audit trail), or a scoring-algorithm update where points-per-action values are tuned and past events are retroactively repriced. Live data drift like a plugin install count dropping does not remove Total credit. For Community Impact: it can also shift down when the formula updates or when caps are added, since Community Impact is computed live from current state every hour instead of accumulated from a ledger.
Are there bonus points for streaks or daily activity? +
Not today. The current model rewards specific actions and outcomes, not session frequency. If a streak signal would be useful, it can be added without resetting anyone's score.
Will the formula change? +
Yes, when the data tells us to. Points get tuned when a bucket starts dominating the board, losing meaning, or being gamed. Updates apply to past scores too. For Total: if a per-action value drops, past events get repriced; if a cap is added, excess events get trimmed. For Community Impact: the next hourly recompute uses the new formula for everyone at once. This keeps the leaderboard fair for folks who joined after a rule changed.
Where can I see the events that built my score? +
Admins can see the Total ledger and the Community Impact breakdown. A self-serve view is on the roadmap. If you want to see the math behind your number today, message support and we'll walk through it.
