Recognition & Reliability
How Coterie recognises members who show up — contribution, tiers, badges, streaks and reliability.
Contribution
Contribution is what you earn for taking part in a session: reviewing other members' work, and finishing what you took on.
Each session carries a fixed pool of contribution for reviews, shared out in proportion to how many of your assigned reviews you complete. It's a fixed pool rather than a rate per review, which means a session is worth the same whether your circle has three people in it or ten — you're never better off for being in a bigger room.
Finish every review you were assigned before the deadline and you earn a completion bonus on top. Do that in consecutive sessions and each one after the first adds a small streak bonus.
Contribution measures participation inside Coterie. It is never earned for likes, comments, shares, follows or any other action on an external platform.
Points are recorded as they were earned. If your community's owner changes what things are worth, the change applies to future sessions — it never rewrites what you already did.
Tiers
Your total contribution places you on a tier. There are five, and your community's owner can rename them and set what each one costs, so the ladder in your Coterie may not look like anyone else's.
Unlike points, tiers apply immediately: a tier is worked out from your running total rather than stored, so if an owner adjusts the ladder, everyone moves at once.
Some communities attach a perk to a tier — access to something, a resource, a call. If yours does, you'll see it on your dashboard. If it doesn't, you won't see anything at all.
Badges
Badges mark specific things you've done: your first session, a clean sweep where you finished every review, streaks of three, ten and twenty-five, months held at high reliability, and review totals as they mount up.
They're worked out from your history rather than granted and stored, so they're always consistent with the record — and the ones you haven't earned stay visible, so you can see what's next.
There are eleven, and they're the same in every Coterie. An owner can't add, remove or rename them, which means a badge means the same thing wherever you earned it.
| Badge | What earns it |
|---|---|
| First session | Took part in your first session. |
| Clean sweep | Finished every review you were assigned in a session. |
| Getting into rhythm | Completed three sessions in a row. |
| Ten in a row | Completed ten sessions without missing one. |
| Twenty-five in a row | Completed twenty-five sessions without missing one. |
| Dependable | Held reliability at 90% or better for a whole month. |
| Never missed | Held reliability at 95% or better for a whole month. |
| Three straight | Reached the 90% band in three different months. |
| Fifty reviews | Left fifty reviews for other members. |
| Two hundred and fifty reviews | Left two hundred and fifty reviews for other members. |
| Twenty-five sessions | Took part in twenty-five sessions, in a row or not. |
The three monthly ones need at least five assigned reviews in the month to count. A month where you were given two reviews and did both doesn't earn a reliability badge — there wasn't enough to judge.
Reliability
Your reliability score is the share of assigned reviews you completed, against those you missed or declined. It reflects whether you show up for the sessions you chose to join — not just whether you eventually get to a review, but whether you do it inside the window, round after round.
Reviews released because a session was cancelled, or because a post was pulled by moderation, are never counted against you. Those are the system's doing, not yours.
Hold reliability at 90% or better across a calendar month, over at least five assignments, and you earn a monthly award; hold it at 95% or better and you earn the higher one. The bands don't stack — 96% earns the higher award, not both.
It's also the signal your community's owner uses when judging who's dependable to match people with.
Strikes
Strikes come from upheld moderation reports — spam, abuse, inappropriate submissions, or dishonest completion. Enough of them, and an owner can pause your membership.
Missing a review doesn't give you a strike. It affects your reliability, which is a separate and much gentler thing.
If you know you're going to miss a window — travel, a busy week, whatever — skip the review with a reason rather than letting it lapse silently. It still counts against your reliability, but it tells your circle where they stand.
Submitting while you have reviews outstanding
An overdue review blocks you from submitting a new post. Not a late one — an overdue one, meaning its deadline has passed and it's still open. One is enough; there's no allowance.
The Engagement page shows what's outstanding and how far past the deadline each one is. Clear them and posting unlocks straight away.
This is deliberate: a circle only works if the people posting into it are also the people commenting. Submitting again while your circle is still waiting on you is the one thing the model can't absorb.
A review you skipped with a reason is closed, not outstanding, so it doesn't hold up posting. It still counts against your reliability.
Where to check yours
Your dashboard shows your contribution, tier, current streak, reliability and badges, along with any reviews still open.