June 15, 2026: Making Our Point System Clearer

At Prison Professors, our team is constantly working to improve the user experience of our website. Sometimes those improvements come from technical reviews, and sometimes they come from the thoughtful feedback of people in our community who use the platform every day.

Recently, one of our ambassadors raised an important question about how Impact Scores, Tribe Points, and Tribe Members appear on participant profiles. She noticed that some people who were actively helping others engage with the platform appeared to have tribe-related numbers that were difficult to understand.

That feedback prompted our team to take a closer look.

After reviewing the data, we confirmed that the point calculations were working according to the current rules, but we also found that one part of the profile page could be clearer. The page was showing the total size of the tribe a person belonged to, rather than the number of people that person had personally referred or helped bring into the network.

Under the current system:

• Individual Points reflect a person’s own activity, such as creating a profile, writing a bio, submitting journal entries, completing book reports or release plans, documenting achievements, and receiving approved testimonials.

• Tribe Points reflect the activity of people in a person’s referral network. In other words, tribe points are connected to the people someone personally brings into the community, along with the activity that grows from that referral chain.

• Tribe Members should therefore reflect the person’s own network, not simply the larger tribe they are part of.

To make the platform easier to understand, we updated the profile page so that “Tribe Members” now aligns with the same referral-based structure used for tribe points. This change makes the information more consistent, more accurate, and easier for participants, ambassadors, and staff to interpret.

This feedback also raised a larger and important question: how should we recognize people who help others participate, even when they may not be listed as the official referrer?

Many members of our community serve as facilitators. They help people create profiles, submit content, participate in workshops, and stay engaged with personal-development work. That kind of support is valuable, and we are continuing to evaluate how the platform can better recognize it.

Possible future improvements may include:

• Clearer distinctions between direct referrals, total network, and tribe membership.

• Better ways to link facilitators with the people they help onboard.

• A separate recognition category for verified facilitation.

• Badges or other forms of acknowledgment for people who consistently help others engage.

We are also preparing to explain our point system more broadly, including in conversations with Bureau of Prisons leaders about how staff members may use the system to support positive incentives. For that reason, clarity matters. Participants should understand what their scores mean. Staff should be able to interpret the scores confidently. Ambassadors and facilitators should see that their work is recognized and valued.

We are grateful to the members of our community who help us identify areas for improvement. Every question, suggestion, and observation helps us build a better platform.

Our goal is to keep improving step by step—making the website more transparent, more useful, and more effective for everyone working toward growth, accountability, and preparation for success.