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Badges for Commentards
Today we introduce badges for commentards. This feature will be rolling out over the next few hours. Check out our story here.
This topic was created by Drewc.
Great - a Bore's Charter
Rewards for quantity not quality make no sense.
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
You did see that thing about upvotes being required for a silver badge, right?
And about gold badges being selected manually by the Reg team?
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
How about only counting posts that have a certain number of upvotes to the total?
Or looking at average upvotes per post?
(biased suggestion because I don't post much but like to think I score reasonably on this measure!)
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
Isn't that what the upvote requirement is for? Admittedly you'll be able to farm more of those if you just keep on posting, assuming you can avoid being an arse and getting the opposite effect, but 2,000 upvotes is still an awful lot.
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
So bronze and silver badges reward activity / with a dash of upvotes for quality - and gold badges reward quality.
We can of course change the criteria for selection - but we have to start somewhere. And somewhere is here.
We will add other voting options to help determine "quality" - but any more badges we do introduce will be awarded on an automated basis.
And we welcome all suggestions for more badges - I see we have a call for purple! OK, but what is a purple badge in recognition of?
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
"...what is a purple badge in recognition of?"
A sore helmet?
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
Any chance of a scarlet letter being awarded?
Re: Great - a Bore's Charter
Can you add a profile option that will allow those of us who don't care, to opt out?
A sore helmet?
I see an advertising partnership opportunity there for ID Lubricants or KY Jelly to sponsor all purple badges - you Reg guys should get your sales department on to that, especially if there's a competition involved - sorest comentard wins an iPad and a years supply of helmet protector!
I'd be up for entering that!
Hmm
Obviously this new highlights when you need to go for therapy. or a beer, instead of posting more self opinionated gibberish.
It's a bad sign that I don't even remember when I switched to current nick. Where did I leave my coat?
Re: Hmm
Ok, a search reveals it was about this week 5 years ago I changed nick. So long ago :(
:eek:
Re: Hmm
... and you're still here. That's truly courage beyond the call of duty.
Maybe you could a.. I don't know... a badge or something.
Badges?
We don't need no stinkin' badges...
But I want one :)
@Phil O'Sophical (was: Re: Badges?)
I don't need or want a stinking badge. Just another excuse to game the system.
How about a special badge for amanfrommars ? Just because.
I'd be all for giving it a special badge and a link to its website. It's getting ever more on the money.
AmanfromMars badge - I like
And maybe it would stop newbies reporting him.
Re: AmanfromMars badge - I like
I did wonder why he's now called "aManFromMars 1".
Seriously, reported? Dammit, that martian is part of the wallpaper!
Re: AmanfromMars badge - I like
Speaking of "newbies", Drew ... That's amfM. Capitalization is important. Computers are literal ...
Re: AmanfromMars badge - I like
DrewC wrote:
"And maybe it would stop newbies reporting him."
ROTFLMAO
You could turn it around and gives everyone who reports it a badge. Potential badge titles are: "I didn't do the research", "I failed the Turning test"*, or just plain "Suckered!". The first has wider application as a discretionary badge for people who annoy mods. The last one could repurpose the facepalm icon.
* Okay, technically it's "I gave an algorithm a pass in the Turing test."
Re: AmanfromMars badge - I like
If amanfrommars gets a badge it should definitely be green. I've always wondered why he changed his handle to amanfrommars1 as well. Did he forget his password or is it a different Martian posting?
Re: AmanfromMars badge - I like
But the little men that inhabit it are not...
Can I have a badge for all the comments I've not posted? They were all worthless shite. And by self-censoring I've saved you money on storage and bandwidth.
What? None for me?
After all those bloody corrections I've sent in!
Re: What? None for me?
So Jamie - a corrections badge? That would be very cool for The Reg.
However, for this to work you and anyone else would need to send corrections in via "send corrections" and not as a post.
That would give us just one place to look at, when considering nominees.
Re: What? None for me?
Wouldn't a corrections badge be white? Or if you struck an advertising deal with Tipp-Ex it could be their logo.
Re: What? None for me?
I was thinking more an Irritating Bastard badge.... what about a BOFH badge? Guess that would be internal :)
Re: What? None for me?
> for this to work you and anyone else would need to send corrections in via "send corrections" and not as a post.
I do. Constantly.
It would be nice if comments had numbers...
The badges are dandy, and giving gold/silver folks the ability to edit posts will be interesting!
However, I would like to propose that comments receive a number, in order that they were posted... so that when commenters refer to another's comment, we all don't go blind looking to track down the greyscale name marking the comment in question. A nice big number on each comment would be most helpful to keep track of the comment-recomment flow.
cheers.
Re: It would be nice if comments had numbers...
"The badges are dandy,"
Nope. Useless waste of CPU and bandwidth.
"and giving gold/silver folks the ability to edit posts will be interesting!"
No. Absolutely not. Posts are written by induhvidual commentards, and should not be re-written by pseudo-Olympic medal winners.
"However, I would like to propose that comments receive a number, in order that they were posted... so that when commenters refer to another's comment, we all don't go blind looking to track down the greyscale name marking the comment in question. A nice big number on each comment would be most helpful to keep track of the comment-recomment flow."
That number already exists. Why ElReg doesn't do exactly what you propose is beyond me.
Re: It would be nice if comments had numbers...
Wow, you're a cheery one, aren't you?
Waste of CPU and bandwidth? You know, my grandpa lived through the depression and wasn't one to throw away money or time on trivial comforts... but really? Waste of CPU and bandwidth?
And, uh, the ability to edit comments means 'the ability to edit *your own* comments' - an ability you'd have done well to avail yourself of, fellow silver-badged-1024-byte-PNG-bandwidth-wasting-pseudo-Olympic-medal-winning member.
Re: It would be nice if comments had numbers...
It's not much bandwidth or CPU, but it's a monumental waste of time. Someone's spending time working on this and for what.
It's pretty much the equivalent of getting the gold and silver stars that I vaguelly remember being dished out in my first year in primary school for being able to tie your own laces, picking up a pencil for the teacher, telling Miss Adams that Patrick Johnson had peed on the floor, or something equally trivial.
The sad thing is, the ability to edit comments would be a benefit to the site as a whole if *everyone* had it. It seems utterly bizarre to develop genuinely useful functionality and then limit it to a subset.
How about a Devil's Advocate badge
For those posts which may have received a lot of downvotes, but generated some serious conversations?
Trolling isn't all bad, you know ; )
Perception.
Something I'm now curious about is how will other commentards perceive the comments of those who have badges next to their names, and will there be an option to hide the badge if you receive one and don't wish to display it.
Re: Perception.
Haku,
Since my badge appeared, someone seems to have downvoted the first half page of my posts. Heaven knows why they bothered...
Are they embittered because my badge is better than theirs? Or have El Reg turned me into a trolling monster, by giving me a golden vulture?
Yippee! Just got to edit a typo.
Re: Perception.
Do what I do. Ignore up/down votes. They are even more meaningless than pseudo-Olympic medals.
Re: Perception.
Sometimes the downvotes are interesting. Particularly when someone takes the trouble to waste 15 minutes of their life downvoting your posts one after the other. That's downright fascinating. One hopes, this being an IT site, that they've written a script to do it...
On the other hand votes can counteract the echo-chamber that many internet forums become. For example: It's still kool to hate Micro$oft, apparently. However even if 90% of the comments on a thread are on that theme, a comment that's a bit more balanced will often find more upvotes than downvotes - even thought the composition of the thread would indicate to the contrary. I guess that means there really is a silent majority. Many people just don't enjoy an argument, which is fair enough.
Plus, I'm always willing to upvote a good pun. Or even a bad one.
Goals?
How about some encouragement to earn badges, so It could say 'You've posted 89 times this last year, only 11 left to go for a Bronze badge' or 'You're only a few rounds of beer and a cattle prod away from a Gold badge'
Re: Goals?
Thumbs down?!? Don't you people like setting yourself goals? Or was it the suggestion that voting could be swayed by bribery and/or physical violence?
Gold, silver, bronze...
...and a rusty sheriff's badge for Andrew and Lewis, I hope.
There should be a 'martyr for his people' badge for people who've often been heavily-downvoted in posts containing the phrase "At least [in whatever country / here] we [etc etc]"...
Perhaps badges for people who've used certain icons an absurd number of times? EG, 'I'll be here all week' for using lots of get-my-coat badges, or 'pyrotechnician' for using lots of 'flames' icons, or 'obnoxious little git' for using lots of penguin icons...
Badges like the 'top ten upvoted posts' idea but for posters who've had highly-controversial posts (tons of upvotes AND downvotes - say, upV + downV / (1 + abs(upV - downV), or something like that... Maybe that one should be a magnet: You know - polarizing?
I see what I did there...
(Oh, and, if any of the previous are accepted, it goes without saying that there should be a badge for 'had a badge suggestion accepted'...)
And maybe a badge for people who won a Reg contest and never got their t-shirt and man that was like years ago but now never will because they attacked Andrew Orlowski's IP positions too many times. I mean... it has to happen quite a bit, right?
"And maybe a badge for people who won a Reg contest and never got their t-shirt and man that was like years ago but now never will because they attacked Andrew Orlowski's IP positions too many times. I mean... it has to happen quite a bit, right?"
I'm still waiting for my packet of "Camel Balls" and -why yes- I may have disparaged Mr. Orlowski once or twice. Put me down for one of those.
Ha! I wondered what was going on there. And now you're one step closer to silver. Take that!
