A little over 3 years ago, we initiated a system on the site called 'influence'. This
Influence System was designed to reward those users who engage and give back to BiggerPockets.

At first, the system was lauded almost universally by our members, but at a certain point in time it started to become a point of contention. Eventually we changed the system to one that we believed to be more fair and even, but unfortunately, in evaluating the system and your reaction to it, we realized that perhaps the system was doing more harm than good.

Many of our users felt that 'influence' wasn't an accurate measure of their actual influence on the site, and sadly, some of our power users were turned off and cut their participation here.

While I'll argue that the system always did what it was designed to do -- measure those people who at any point in time were making the most impact on the site -- I'm also willing to accept that the system was never perfect by any means.

With that in mind, as we continue our push to improve the site and execute 'Project Simplify' we've decided that it is time for influence to become a relic of the past.

As you can see, there is no longer an influence score reflected on the forum sidebar or on your profiles. As a gift to you for our 8th BiggerPockets Birthday, we've killed off the influence system.

I know several people who will be very happy about this, and extend an invitation to them to return to the site. For those of you who liked the system, I'm sorry, but it just had to go.

Like anything else that we do, I expect strong reaction here. As some of you like to say [pulls out the popcorn] . . .