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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.
Purple Vulture
To those otherwise unbadged with upvote/downvote ratio better than 2:1 - wounded in combat but not out and all that ?
Of course I'm interested, I luv badgers
Re: Purple Vulture
I like the ratio better than the totals count. It says more about quality. (still needs a qualifying balance though)
Re: Purple Vulture
I like the quality idea, but would suggest the ratio at least 5:1 up:down
Badge should have "QA" stamp.
Screw the badges...
...fix it so that I can stay logged in from day to day, and either email me or put a notice on the front page when someone replies to a comment of mine.
Badges etc.
I'd rather it hadn't been done, but I guess silver looks quite nice.
I do think it is a bit too simple to base it just on hitting 2000 upvotes , though : that can be achieved relatively quickly if you take care to get in the first post which captures the mood of the pitchfork-wielders.
Those commentards who will go unacknowledged will be the sort who tend to post contrary (non-troll) views that gather downvotes rather than upvotes, but which spark some very decent and informative responses.
But PLEASE don't go down any path which affects the thing that I like most about elReg : all comments and all commentards are equal. Especially don't link the proposed ability for commentards to vote on posts to affect whether or not a post is visible.
Get in the first post which captures the mood of the pitchfork-wielders.
And if you can't get in the first post, another trick is to reply to the first post. So even if people are late, they have a better chance to get on the first page with its greater potential for upvoting.
Re: Badges etc.
all voters are anonymous - except to us. We will not change that.
Lets see if I have a badge
The post is required, and must not contain letters.
No badge
I didn't get a badge. Might as well kill myself.
Yay - I'm a star!
Hmm. So how exactly do I edit a posst?
Serious anomoly.
Mike Flugennock & Peter Gathercole are Bronze.
Yet I am Silver?
And Trevor Pott is Gold?
There is something seriously wrong with the system ...
medals
How about a 'Golden Bollox' award for the most helpful suggestions?
New HTML...?
But wait, this box says "Plain text only -- no HTML allowed"...!
Is there a list of all permitted HTML somewhere?
Re: New HTML...?
I can do html, even when posting as anon, perhaps your account isn't html activated yet?
Re: New HTML...?
Were you actually logged in when you saw that. There is a list - in house rules, but you have to scroll down. We'll figure out something more approachable.
Well This Is Interesting
<blockquote>Where can I check my upvotes? Just so I know how much more karma whoring I have to do. And do downvotes negate upvotes?</blockquote>
<ul>Most</ul> of my down votes have been awarded to me by Freetards due to my stance on copyright which is taken as a direct result of having my IP ripped off by people who ought to and do know better, right up until they are caught. Then they claim they had no idea, good faith. Blah blah blah.
I do have a dog in this fight unlike the academics (the tinkering classes) who are paid other people's money to theorise about how other people should run their business, to better benefit people with lots of money over those with less. Still, at least I will wear my bronze badge with pride and I'll enjoy <sub>playing</sub> with my <sup>new tools.</sup>
Re: Well This Is Interesting
> Where can I check my upvotes?
Top right of the page, click on 'My Posts'. It says at the top. My next target is an up:down ratio of 4:1 - prolly take me another six months.
Badge position
For my taste it looks a bit messy; those badges are all over the place. No idea how to align it though.
New badge ideas.
I didn't think I'd made bronze, so I spent the whole night thinking up idea for badge I would be entitled to:
* Automatic: 50 upvotes or downvotes on a single comment.
* Discretionary: an "I helped with an SPB project" badge. That would be far more rewarding that an ephemeral promise of beer...
My life will be complete when the vulture overlord grants me a little picture resembling a medal.
Seriously it will, I suppose it is time for me to start posting some more spurious shite.
Yup its deffinately a way to drive up the comment traffic. An incentive to post, perhaps They should have considered basing the awards on quality not quantity, ie on upvotes per post ratio, or up to down vote ratio...
Badges
Don't like it. Badges deter new commentards and give forums a whiff of pettiness. Also, it makes people post for the wrong reasons, which may have a detrimental affect on post quality. Also it may encourage trolling - trolls are always voted down, but sometimes they get many thumbs ups too.
Eg. This post would have garnered more favour if I made it a rude one-liner about how apple fans love badges
Congrats to the badge-rs
Also the Reg for an impressive bit of social engineering. I try to post only when I think I have something to say, and so it's taken me not one but three years to get to one hundred posts, but I was sorely tempted to abandon my principles and try to score a bronze. I would stand and applaud El Reg for the genius of the idea, but I'm too busy fretting over the revelation of just how pathetically low my self-esteem is and how greedy I am for any sort of validation.
Re: Congrats to the badge-rs
"Congrats to the badge-rs?"
Dude, there's a golden disk by my name that says "get a life, you twat." Speaking of which...
Suggestions
Perhaps some sort of awards for 'Grumps' (mainly awards down votes) and 'Trumps' (mainly awards up votes). - feel free to rename the options!
Re: Suggestions
I haven't got a replacement for "Trumps" but that one might leave a lingering odour....
its a good thing nobody put any effort into making the badges line up on the page
Move the badges
Can we move the badges to the left of the name? Being on the right, with different length usernames, they aren't aligned! Maybe it's just my OCD, but damn I want to move them!
Re: Move the badges
The badges are OK, but the ignore button is really intrusive... I'd suggest it is aligned on the opposite side of the page to the badge.
Or that you have to go to a user's profile to ignore them, to a)tidy things up b)make it require a tiny bit of effort
Re: Move the badges
The ignore button is intrusive - but only to the 10 gold badge holders (we'll roll this out to other badge holders in due course). We are replacing with a "Block" text link.
Re: Move the badges
Drew,
I'm glad you're moving this, I've clicked it by mistake a couple of times.
I also agree with the suggestions that other have made, to move the badge before the username, so it doesn't end up floating way out in the middle of the page for those with really long user names.
Oh and...
Can we have a "CRAPS LOCK" or similar insulting button for those who insist in typing posts in capitals? I will apologise for my own submission and you may vote down as required, but I really do think incorrect capitalisation should be discouraged.
Re: Oh and...
e.e. cummings is my hero you insensitive
p
e
r
s
o
n.
Screw the badges.
There is an ignore button. I am so happy.
Re: Screw the badges.
There is? I guess this is for gold badge holders only.
Personally though I don't use ignore functions. It's like sticking your fingers in your ears and going "laa laa laa" while the people you don't like carry on talking anyway, and you're unable to counteract their arguments because you can't hear them.
Could be a bit of a backfire, basically.
Re: Screw the badges.
Mr Gale, I would kindly ask that you read this comic by The Oatmeal. I recognise that Senor Oats is not to everyone's taste, but I believe that he has summed up my feelings on the matter in a manner more succinct that I am capable of expressing.
TL;DR...some people are just toxic shitheads. Putting your fingers in your ear and saying "la la la I can't hear you" is just good for your sanity. There is a difference between ignoring dissent and cutting out the truly toxic individuals who will have a demonstrably negative effect on your mental well being.
There honestly and truly are some individuals in this world who have fucking nothing worthwhile to contribute. I can say with 100% confidence that my quality of life will improve by simply never having to deal with those twatdangles ever again. I have no interest in counteracting thier arguments; there's no margin in that for me.
@Trevor_Pott (was: Re: Screw the badges.)
"There is an ignore button. I am so happy."
Why are you happy? What is it about ASCII text commentardary that you want to shy away from?
Seriously, dude/tte, if you put yourself out there and offer-up myopic comments, us commentards will give you shit. Ignoring it on your part won't change the reality of the situation.
Nice
Like the idea of tying badges to the handle. Also only giving badge holders editing rights (a pet peeve of mine, generally).
"Also, votes on your anonymous posts do not count towards you gaining badges." Boo! Can we anonymous cowards have some badges of our own, please?
Woo shiny Yay
I take it going forwards that badge assignment is going to be automatic from now, rather than El Reg staff having to hack through the assignment process every day/week/month/when they remember.
AC stuff should count towards your score, or the My Posts page should be updated (You have 100 upvotes, 20 downvotes total. (AC 10 upvotes, 19 downvotes)) Actually, that'd be pretty cool to see anyway. Do people react better to me or my mask?
OR AC could still show the right badge for the commentard. AC, gold badge... "Well, I don't know who this was, but we can narrow it down a bit!"
Re: wrong
I honestly don't know how to respond to that...
Have an epic falmpalm.
Now consider the point that putting badges against AC would negate them being AC, and the fact that I knew that...
Blazing Saddles quote
"We don' need no steeeekeeng badges!"
Re: Blazing Saddles quote
... which was cribbed from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Paris, coz she probably has mounted Federales on film too.
hmmm Weirdness...
Member since 2007-10-13.... Check
Haven't change handle since forever ....Check
Postcount this year >100 ... Check.
So according to the criteria posted I should be entitled to a bronze thingie. Yet while my "your posts" page is getting close to a pagecount of 5 ( @ 50 posts per page), mostly from this year, the info in "Details/my forums" states:
"My posts
In total, your 5 public posts have been upvoted 590 times and downvoted 93 times.
View them here"
Unless I have made some truly epic posts to get that amount of applause and derision that may have happened to slipped my mind, I'd say something is wonky here. Specifically that somehow any post after jan/2008 is not counted, even though the up/downvotes are.
*Disclaimer* This post is entirely engendered by a deep worry that something may be amiss in the back-end of the precious Commentard Archive at Vulture Central, and has nothing to do with El Reg handing out Shineys... welll sort of anyways
Re: hmmm Weirdness...
Same here.
Also, can I give my badge away?
Thanks for bug report
I have gotten your 5 public post message too - sent to devs to investigate.
