[Proposal] Badges. Badges everywhere

[elliottflz65]

With the introduction of reporting badges on the horizon we should consider introducing badges for other things. Most importantly I think looking at the possibly of rewarding a badge for setting a custom trust list. The trust system is wholeheartedly broken and theymos has even said himself its not working as intended.  We are not sure of the positive effects that badges bring at the moment. But this is why reporting statistics should be released before the implementation of the badges and then after an initial period (3 months) we should look to see if this has increased the number of reports being made.

If it has then we have hit the jackpot and the status of getting a badge encourages members to do things that they wasn't doing before. Therefore the trust system might not be doomed after all and might only need minor adjustments in the future if we were to implement badges for creating a custom list. Among others things too. Reaching milestones of posts, time signed in or merit gained.

There is a reason why universities reward virtual badges now and its because people love to show off to other people their accomplishments and making the badges stand out without being annoying is a great way to improve things without even....well improving things.

[1714735097]

1714735097

[1714735097]

1714735097

[Lafu]

After theymos post the thread about reporting badges i know there was more Users coming to the report thing !

It was realy nice to see that more User hit that button now as before just see it and dont care about spam !

In the Last weeks there was again a punch of more new users doing that , and i just can say its nice to see every week more doing it !


Cheers to all the Reporters  

[HODL2090]

Among others things too. Reaching milestones of posts, time signed in or merit gained.

I see no concrete reason why there should be badges made for posting milestone or merits received.
There is enough motive to seek to gain merits, and I don't see why we should enocurage people to post to get badges

Reporter badges would be to encourage members to use the 'report' button and also to reward those who already use it

Reporter statistics are not public, unlike post count and merits which can be viewed in the profile and determines the members rank and ability to wear, avatars and signatures.

[Lafu]

Reporter statistics are not public

You can take look here if you want some statistics  Reporter Statistics

[bitmover]

I think earned merit badges would be nice.

After all earned merit should have some kind of difference between Airdrop merit. There are hundreds of users who never earned not even 5 merit over the year and received 1000 airdrop merited.

High activity badged would be cool too. Like 1800 or 2000 activity. Few users have so much activity

[Quickfant]

I see no concrete reason why there should be badges made for posting milestone or merits received.
There is enough motive to seek to gain merits, and I don't see why we should enocurage people to post to get badges

Reporter badges would be to encourage members to use the 'report' button and also to reward those who already use it

Reporter statistics are not public, unlike post count and merits which can be viewed in the profile and determines the members rank and ability to wear, avatars and signatures.

Enough motive? You mean the means of ranking up? Sure but we are talking about "earned" merit. Not the merit people started with because they had already been here. Besides ranking up above Legendary then there isn't too much of a merit unless you mean just having a visual merit display. But its been proven time and time again that images work better. Its why a lot of advertisements use elaborate images to gain the attention. A nice design of a badge for 500 and 1000 merit "earned" would be a good thing in my opinion.

[Gloverwrt]

I think earned merit badges would be nice.

After all earned merit should have some kind of difference between Airdrop merit.

This could work quite well, after the demotion of jr members with no merits, I was expecting actions to be taken against all members yet to earn a single merit.
It's worse having a legendary member spamming the forum, and carries the title but has yet to earn a single merit.

Aside badges, there should be other perks reserved for those with earned merits. Maybe ability to wear avatars.

[joniboini]

Aside badges, there should be other perks reserved for those with earned merits. Maybe ability to wear avatars.

You can wear avatar after you ranked up to Full Member though. Unless you mean that regardless of the ranks, we should earn some merits first before we can use avatar and/or signature.

[S_Therapist]

Am I the only one feeling there is not enough space to put a lot of badges in the profile?
I believe it would encourage people (real user) to set custom trust list. I personally have no choice but to believe the DT since I didn't have a deal here till now.
Most of the forum members only care about the trust system when they are looking for a signature campaign. I don't think there will be a change. And if we think about the people who are here for not only earning some money through signature campaign, I mean the people who care about the system truely or had some deal, we will have a lot of people using the custom trust list.
Besides, as I mentioned at the beginning, if there are a lot of badges in the profile section, it will look annoying, IMO.

[DdmrDdmr]

I’m not particularly keen on there being a lot of badges around that would turn profiles into a lookalike of a general’s military decoration set (with alternate forum equivalents for the Medal of Honor/Victoria Cross and so forth). As @S_Therapist states, it’s not as is there seems to be much room for them anyway. Of course I’m not even wearing an Avatar, so perhaps personal visual indicators are not that appealing to me on the whole.

I Wouldn’t mind seeing the earned merit on the profile though (numerical figure), since it is such an intricate concept of the forum’s meta structure, but that’s about it.

[AverageGlabella]

The last point about Universities using them is a good point. Online course sites like Coursera and EDX are also using this approach. To my knowledge Havard uses this approach too and for good reason. I've done some research on how status effects the decisions people make. A great example of this is when people buy cars. First we have to look at why cars were invented in the first place. Cars were invented to transport someone/something from A to B. Though as time has gone on we'e continuity made faster and more stylish cars. Sure you might think getting fastet from A to B would be a good thing. But in modern times it is not because most areas have a speed limit that a 220mph car would have no use of its additional power to a normal Ford Focus. But people are allured by the fact that it looks nice and sounds nice and has the ability of going fast even if they'll never be able to fully harness that speed themselves. Image is everything in the modern world. You are instantly more attractive and interesting if you have flashy things. People will ask you about the story behind the car or how much it costs or how fast you've been in it. Its the same as badges. Universities have taking the example above and applied it to online. Showing off to your friends that you have completed a course makes people look good and feel good. Its exactly why Facebook is popular for people flexing or even Instagram. Instagram is probably a better example as all people do is flex what they have. Implementing badges for most noteworthy stuff on the forum would be a good idea. I think I recall theymos saying he was introducing some sort of courses to the forum anyway and badges will probably become a big think on the forum.

[HeRetiK]

Reporting badges sound good to me but I'm not so sure about an inflationary use of badges.

Sure it's fun, but I think it would also be detrimental to the original purpose of introducing badges as means of incentivizing desired behaviour like reporting spam -- that is, the more badges you have, the less meaningful the individual badge becomes. Now you just have a wall of badges, with the spam reporting being one of many and thus not as desirable as it should be.

That's not to say that reporting is the only forum action that is worthy of receiving a badge; I'm sure there's other use cases as well where this form of gamification could be applied. It's just that I would not go overboard with it as that would likely reduce the effectiveness of such a system. That's just my 2 sats though.

[hilariousetc]

I'm all for badges for things like reports or high amounts of merit, but I don't think we need them for everything and not just for setting a trust list. People should be able to do that without a badge. Also, I think if we we're going to change the trust system we should probably just get rid of it and just have a basic feedback system where you can leave feedback and it doesn't effect your score. No trust system is perfect and whatever we do people will complain. I think the current one works fairly well in 99% of cases but obviously when people get negative feedback they kick up an extreme fuss about it. Sometimes people leave feedback for silly or incorrect reasons but I think those should just be dealt with on a case by case basis and maybe some users inclusion on DT should be reviewed.

[cryptohunter]

I’m not particularly keen on there being a lot of badges around that would turn profiles into a lookalike of a general’s military decoration set (with alternate forum equivalents for the Medal of Honor/Victoria Cross and so forth). As @S_Therapist states, it’s not as is there seems to be much room for them anyway. Of course I’m not even wearing an Avatar, so perhaps personal visual indicators are not that appealing to me on the whole.

I Wouldn’t mind seeing the earned merit on the profile though (numerical figure), since it is such an intricate concept of the forum’s meta structure, but that’s about it.

Earned merit is too cycled in small circles, concentrated and subjective as to provide any real value so no point with that being viewed. Could switch that on for display in meta board but everywhere else would be a meaningless number.

Badges would be better than that with some actual strict criteria measured equally with equal opportunity of review and reward by all members whom meet that strict criteria.

[Findingnemo]

If possible having badges for scam finder will be much appreciated,we have lot of people in this forum who have dedicated themselves for exposing the scams in this forum d=fir that they were spending lot of their time so we can appreciate them with some badges like cop have.

[jonemil24]

nullius was waiting for it a long time ago

-
So, how long to process this before I get my badge?

Sadly, he's gone.

[manfredmann]

However, badges and report will not be effective for some users usually spammer would not mind doing it because they are already used to it. And i have seen usual posts that are being reported are those bounty campaign reports on facebook and twitter bounties section where it has nothing to do with the bounty hunter and why it is.being reported as it is only a requirement to get stakes from the one manages the bounty. If there is a problem with that it should start reporting the bounty manager and not the bounty hunters.

[elliottflz65]

I'm all for badges for things like reports or high amounts of merit, but I don't think we need them for everything and not just for setting a trust list. People should be able to do that without a badge. Also, I think if we we're going to change the trust system we should probably just get rid of it and just have a basic feedback system where you can leave feedback and it doesn't effect your score. No trust system is perfect and whatever we do people will complain. I think the current one works fairly well in 99% of cases but obviously when people get negative feedback they kick up an extreme fuss about it. Sometimes people leave feedback for silly or incorrect reasons but I think those should just be dealt with on a case by case basis and maybe some users inclusion on DT should be reviewed.

Yes but the thing is no one is currently setting custom lists because they aren't interested in that side of things. I haven't got a custom list because I'm not really interested in trading and am not sure who to really endorse by putting them on my list. Currently I only really trust theymos. I think having weights on trust feedback is a good idea though and shouldn't be removed. Yes it can and has been abused but it does serve a purpose.