Microsoft Forums will change their recognition system on July 14th 2011

Next week, on the 14th of July, the TechNet and MSDN forums are going to migrate to a new recognition system! This is definitely a big step forward in rewarding community contributors for the quality of their contributions, instead of only focussing on the quantity. The achivements will also be better visible to other forum users. Some of the main features are:

Centralized Recognition
The old recognition system was just based on Forums. Starting from July the 14th, points will also be rewarded for Profile an Galleries. The next step will be, to also add participation on Blogs and Wikis

Points and Achievements
Points are gained by contributing content the community finds valuable. Achievements are gained by users for volume based activity, like posting or answering a lot. The bug in the old system where one could self-mark their own answer and get rewarded is also removed!

Points Changes
On July 14th user points will be updated for all users. Users will see new point totals and achievements for the history of their participation in the forums for the past six years. Some users will gain points but most points will be adjusted to a lower value based on the new points algorithm.

You can preview what the new system will look like in the CTP Preview here:
http://ctp.social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories

I took a quick a look at what my profile will look like, see below.

More info on the forum change: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/addeditdelete/archive/2011/06/30/forums-recognition-update-coming-july-14th-2011.aspx