does the new forum really need badges? also the title has a character limit which is kind of annoying
It’s not a limit, it’s a minimum so that there’s a chance the title might actually describe the contents of the topic. (As you discovered, it is still possible to make a post with a completely non-descriptive title. (For others: this topic’s title was initially “Wut? is up with this”.))
As for the badges, they’re out of the way and do provide some useful information (like the fact that you have not yet read the FAQ). We’ll be adding stuff like years attended as badges to make it more generally useful, though.
fair enough on both points. I was thinking it was just some bloatware options left on for the forum software
For what it’s worth, I do agree that the default badges are kinda meh. The possibility of using it for our own stuff is the reason I didn’t look into turning it off. I want to actively showcase and promote things like “5 Time Volunteer” or whatever… (At least when I get time to look at integrating with that stuff, heh.)
The more crazy feature I’m leaving turned on is actually Trust Levels. Users who are really active (and well-behaved) automatically earn some really limited moderator/janitor abilities. It weirded me out when I first read about it, but it seems to work way better than you might think on other Discourse forums. (A big part of that is that every edit, moderator action, or even administrator action is totally reversible, unlike with most other forum software. About the only things that can’t be un-done with a click are we can’t un-send notification emails, and in some really narrow circumstances it’s possible to permanently delete an account that never posted anything but spam.)
That is a good use for badges if they can encourage people to volunteer, speaking of which there is no thread to sign up for that yet…
The trust levels do seem neat and useful method for a community to self police, though that’d probably depend on how well it was weighted between activity and behavior. In my experience obnoxious people usually find a way to game these systems but we do enjoy a pleasant community at CFT.
Right now the weight / requirements for trust level 3 is probably impossible to obtain given the activity level on our community. It would be (almost) outright entertaining if somebody managed to game the system with a massive amount of good behavior to earn the ability to wreak a tiny bit of easily-undone havok.
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Huh… I actually quite like this forum software. It’s halfway decent as forum softwares go. Badges for 1/2/3/n years attendance would be great. As well as volunteer badges and maybe patron/sponsor badges? Maybe even a badge for the “best butt” winners. X3
I’m just throwing out ideas.
-Mal
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I like all of these ideas. They won’t be in place initially when I get registration live (soon!) but it’ll be near the top of the list of things that get added soon after, possibly even before badge art selection. I know people liked using the old forum’s user list (sorted by group) to see who’s going, and I want to enable that for this year too ASAP.
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Heh. I think you need to start putting the ™ on soon. 