This is big news for those who participate often in the Google forums, they changes the levels of your participation from one through twenty to one through ten.
This is causing some people in the forums to feel they've been demoted. If you had a ranking of 12 and now see a ranking of 7, that looks like a demotion.
Google announced the change in the Google Web Search Help forums amongst others. Nealem from Google wrote:
We just wanted to let you know that we have made changes to our Google Product Forums level system:We have moved from a 20-level scale system to a 10-level scale system to make things simpler, and to help visitors to our forums better understand when a question is being answered by a highly active contributor.
Thanks for being part of the Search Community
The Google Webmaster Help wasn't as quick and dozens of complaints started rolling in until John Mueller clarified:
I just wanted to confirm that we did change the levels in the forums, from 1-20 to 1-10, so those higher than 10 will be moved to 10, and the others may be adjusted accordingly. We absolutely still value your contributions and the help you're giving other webmasters, the displayed level doesn't change that! I'm not sure if permissions will automatically adjusted, but I've changed it so that you can edit your own posts now at level 8 now (that might change over time though).
Since we cover forums, it is important I document this change. Although this has no impact on your search rankings. ;-)
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help & Google Webmaster Help.
