Right before the 2015 Tableau Conference, Rody Zakovich of the Tableau community forum initiated a series of appreciation pieces to a select group of members, including me:
Community Appreciation - Alexander Mou

I am very much moved. It meant a lot to me. I have been in the forum for over a year and I am greatly impressed by the amazing energy and camaraderie in the community. The people there are great and friendly. They can help you solve any Tableau problem. They kind of act as the first line technical support on behalf of Tableau Inc. I leant a great deal by helping others as well.

As my Tableau skills got better, I started answering questions from other members. I became more active this year. Tracy Fitzgerald has been writing a weekly digest for the community. From those digests, I am able to find my progress route:

Community Digest - Ending 3/16: 25 correct answers and Questions for Breakfast badge
Community Digest - Ending 4/6: 50 correct answers and Question Slayer badge
Community Digest - Ending 6/8: 100 correct answers and Answer Wizard badge which seems to be the highest distinction for a forum member.

I keep working on the problems posted in the forum. In a good week, I can even get 10 correct answers:
Community Digest - Ending 6/29

The forum has become a great inspiration for my blog. You might have noticed that I referred to the forum posts quite often.

And one day I was looking for the Crow's Nest (a place where questions got zero answer), I discovered by chance that I was at the top of the leaderboard. The ranking is based how many people I have helped during the past 12 months. I may disappear from the dynamic board if other people do more than I do. This is a screenshot I took today on 10/25/2015.
Below is the note I wrote at the forum in response to the community appreciation:

Rody, Mark and Simon, thanks for the kind words!  I am so touched.

Actually I probably learnt more from people in this forum than I put into it. It is such a vibrant community to which I am very grateful. There are so many interesting problems to solve. It is kind of addictive.

Yes, I have answered a few posts in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Spanish etc, which are less likely to get an answer. As long as people speak Tableau, the lingua franca of this forum, they deserve an answer. Many non-native English speakers may not write in English. But they most likely can read English. I don't speak most of their languages. Armed with Google Translate, I can figure out most of what they intend to say. Patrick Van Der Hyde and Diego Medrano do that all the time. Anyone here can do it too. English not being my native language, I apologize myself to her Majesty if I misused or abused Queen's English. BTW, her Majesty must be really proud if she knew that a contingent of British Empire is colonizing the leader board of the new found territory called Tableau World.

I would encourage anyone here to start a blog. Many questions are recurring ones or following some kind of pattern. They are déjà vu. A quick reply would be a pointer to some blog posts. In other words, blogs make knowledge scalable. Otherwise, we have to answer questions one at a time. Sometimes do so repetitively. Given that Tableau has become a victim of its own success, more questions will inundate the forum.

Also, organizing information creates value, not only to the general knowledge, but also to the blogger himself. For me, I write therefore I learn. If I can't write it, I don't understand it, at least not to the degree I would like to be.

There are many people I am very grateful to in the Tableau community where diverse yet like-minded people gathered and helped each other to learn and to create. In particular, I would express my appreciation to Andy Kriebel whose blog is the first one I read. It opened my eyes to the fantastic world of data visualization. Also I would thank Jonathan Drummey, Joshua Milligan and Mark Jackson from whose blogs I learnt a great deal.  Last but not the least, I would thank Joe Mako for his generosity of solving whatever problems that were too difficult for me and offering to have screen share sessions. As I have found out along the way, many of the techniques such as scaffolding, data densification etc, can all be traced back to Joe, the source.

Keep learning and have fun! Hope to meet you at TC15.