Top Contributors This Month — Active Railfans on Spotatrain
This page tracks the last 30 days of contributions — who's adding spots right now, who's uploading photos this week, who's actively rating new submissions. It's the leaderboard with momentum, refreshed every hour as new entries land in our database.
Why a separate ranking? Because the all-time leaderboard rewards accumulated depth, but it can't capture the railfan who joined three weeks ago and is already mapping a previously undocumented region, or the long-time member who returns to the database with a flurry of photos before a heritage steam excursion. Both are real contributions, both deserve visibility, and both are easier to spot when you collapse the time window to a rolling month.
The scoring formula is the same as on the all-time page — 5 points per published spot, 2 per approved photo, 3 per video submission, 1 per spot rating. Only the time window changes. We use each row's creation timestamp on the user_points ledger, which means corrections, deletions, or removed photos all count toward the live total in real time. If you upload a photo today and it gets removed tomorrow, you'll see your this-month tally drop accordingly.
What we look for in this-month leaders is the same as on the all-time list: careful spots with concrete access notes, photos that show the spot at the right time of day, ratings that reflect actual visits. Quality compounds. A contributor who ranks high in a given month for the right reasons usually has a long all-time arc; the rare exception is the new member who arrives with a clear plan, and that's exactly the contributor we hope to highlight here.
Two ways to get listed: contribute, and contribute again. Sign up if you haven't, submit a spot, add a rating, or upload photos to spots that lack them. The board recomputes on a 1-hour ISR cycle.
Top 30 Contributors This Month
Points earned in the last 30 rolling days only. Cycles automatically as new contributions land.
No contributors with points in the last 30 days — submit a spot to be the first.
How scoring works
Every contribution to Spotatrain is converted into points by a transparent, code-level formula — no editorial weighting, no manual nudges, no hidden multipliers. The breakdown:
| Action | Points | Triggered when |
|---|---|---|
| Submitting a new published spot | 5 | The spot reaches status='published' after admin review. |
| Uploading a user photo to a spot | 2 | Each photo, capped to one award per (user, photo, spot) tuple. |
| Submitting a video an admin approves | 3 | The video is linked to a spot and marked submitted by an editor. |
| Rating a spot | 1 | First rating per (user, spot). Re-rating doesn't double-count. |
What does NOT earn points: comments, likes, edits to your own profile, sharing on social media, spot views, or hovering over the map. These are useful behaviors but they don't add documentary value to the database, so they don't add to your score.
Anti-spam guarantees: each row in user_points is uniquely keyed on (user_id, action_type, spot_id, photo_id, video_id). You cannot earn the same award twice. Submitting the same photo to the same spot twice gives 2 points, not 4. Submitting two different photos to the same spot gives 4. Submitting a spot that gets rejected by an admin gives 0 — we only credit published spots.
Rank tiers (your label below the username) follow cumulative point thresholds:
- 👶🚉 Junior Spotter (0–99) — everyone starts here.
- 🔧 Switchman Apprentice (100–299).
- 🧢 Station Master (300–699).
- 🚆 Certified Train Operator (700–1199).
- 🛠️ Track Inspector (1200–1999).
- 🚦 Signal Controller (2000–3499).
- 🌟 Railway Legend (3500+).
Why these names? Because trainspotting has its own vocabulary, and railfans deserve titles that fit the world rather than generic XP-system levels. The thresholds are calibrated so a serious contributor can reach Track Inspector in a year of regular activity without grinding.
Made an honest mistake — duplicated point row, removed photo that didn't decrement your score, missing rank update? Email us via the contact page with the spot ID or photo URL and we'll correct the underlying ledger row directly. The leaderboard is only useful if it's honest.