I noticed today that I'm now number #518 out of the 14,000+ users on the site. Once more of my submissions get approved, I'll probably move up even further. I'm starting to feel the Xbox "Achievement game" effect. The number was originally meaningless, when I was just one in a sea of people. Now that I'm actually within reach of the top 500 users, it's starting to feel like a competition.

Do I keep making submissions in the hopes that they'll be approved and I'll get ever closer to the number 1 spot, or do I ignore the ranking and just make submissions whenever I notice something is missing or wrong on the site? --- I wonder if this is what other users (GiantBombers?) think about when they come to the site.

Ultimately, I think the whole point behind the rank is to encourage people to make submissions. Whether you're trying to boost yourself higher up the list, or if you're making meaningful submissions for the sake of helping build the site up and could care less about your rank, the end result is the same: the site benefits from our work. For people who care about numbers and rank, it gives them incentive to keep going. If you don't care about your rank, it's just as easy to ignore it.

Right now, I feel good about being #518. All of my contributions have been made for the sake of filling in the gaps for the games I care most about. It won't bother me if I drop in rank. That'll just mean that everyone else is working that much harder, which means we all win.