Note: Rank IDs are not the same as rank numbers. For instance, Rank 8 is not rank ID 8. Also note that 2 different ranks can have the same label and the label itself does not mean anything. An Administrator with the Official BrickFlat label will have more permissions available to him or her than a staff with the same Official BrickFlat label.
The Lithium framework used by the LEGO Message Boards use number-based IDs to sort Ranks from most to least significant. The lowest rank ID is always reserved for administrators, while the highest are usually reserved for the ranks you first earn upon registering. This is however customisable by the customer, in this case the LEGO company.
Rank ID setup[]
The LEGO Message Boards only use even numbers; numbers that can be divided by 2. The reason for this is that the LEGO Education version of the LMBs uses only odd numbers. This was likely done to prevent developers and designers from getting confused. This probably also ensures better compatibility between the two different Boards. Here is the current ID layout for the regular LMBs:
- ID 0-28: Intended for Officials and developers. Contains Administrator and Moderator.
- ID 30-84: Contains user Ranks 1 to 28.
- ID 86-100: Mixed, contains reader ranks, and No Rank. Interestingly, Rank 29 exists here along with staff and community helper ranks.
List of all Rank IDs[]
- 0 - Not used
- 2 - Administrator
- 4 - Not used
- 6 - Lithium Technologies (used by Lithium employees to give tech support)
- 8 - Moderator
- Note - ID 10-20 are all unused.
- 22 - Developer
- 24 - Community Manager
- 26 - Not used
- 28 - VIP
- Note: - ID 30 to 84 contains user Ranks 28 to 1 starting with Rank 28 at ID 30.
- 86 - Maniac Reader
- 88 - Master Reader
- 90 - Apprentice Reader
- 92 - No Rank
- 94 - Staff
- 96 - Rank 29
- 98 - Legendary Reader
- 100 - Community Help
Rank 29 Theories[]
Interestingly, Rank 29 (Alien) is all the way up at ID 96. This suggests that Rank 28 was intended to be the final rank. It was most likely succeeded by Rank 29 to expand the longevity of the LMBs. even more interestingly, the label "Alien" existed before Rank 29 was added to the list. At the time jonencloud released the complete rank list in December 2013, Rank 29 was not part of the list and was added later in 2014. this could mean several things:
- More ranks were made than necessary in case it would be needed to expand the list later.
- Rank labels were created and placed on the server before the list was set up and the staff picked which they wanted to be used in the final list. Alien didn't make the cut originally, but was added when they realized the need to expand the list.
- Rank 29 was supposed to be Alien all along, but it didn't fit in the original list due to how ID 28 and down were reserved.