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 .
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?
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!
In another forum somewhere I postulated the existence of a Brown Badge, awarded on the basis of the number of downvotes a poster gets, or perhaps a ratio of downvotes to upvotes.. So, someone like Barry or Eadon might qualify for this dubious distinction.
Something to think about....
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."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
This post has been deleted by its author
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.
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.
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