Active Member/ Member/ Premium??

I used to be on this forum a lot in 2008/2009/2010. I just came back and I am really confused.

What are the different members?
Why do I need to get likes?

 

It's the way your membership is graded in the hierarchy here. The more trophy points you have, the higher your membership will be. From beginning to end, it runs like this - Greenhorn >> Member >> Active Member >> Well-known Member >> Notable Member >> Illustrious Member >> Prominent Member. If you wanna be higher than a ''Prominent Member', you need to be someone from the Staff.

'Likes' is a way to reduce spam. Since this is a global, open and a free-for-all forum, the vulnerability to spam will always be high. When you get 'likes', it means you're posting stuff which is helpful for others and useful to the community in some way - though some people 'like' really dumb stuff sometimes (which more often than not gets you banned). On the other hand, when you find yourself having a hard time getting the 'likes', either what you're posting is not really contributing anything useful to the forums here or it's most likely spam.

Hope this helps.