Pen and I have a brief chat about this badge and how to award it when we met on Sunday. It may prove to be a bit of a toughy and so I thought I would see what others thought before we impliment anything.
As I understand it this badge goes to anyone who makes a serious and committed effort to post consistently useful/helpful stuff on the forums. This might be answering questions and queries posed by other forum users or regular reviews of games, hardware or movies etc. It could also go to people who stimulate good debate and discussion in "Seriously though..." or a combination of all of them. What it isn't going to be is a reflection of a huge post count or someone trying to duplicate the entire contents of You-tube in "Look what I found on the internet". I think this is going to have to be a hard badge to get. A few helpful posts over a weekend isn't going to be enough IMHO. Consistent quality not quantity.
The problem is how to award it and when to remove it. I and Penfold first thought we might simply make it something we both monitored and agreed on. This might prove to be a problem as I for one do not read every forum post and don't read anything at all in certain forums. I'd also find it potentaily hard to sift out quality in forums that I know little about. For example someone might be posting all kinds of useless advice in Dead Men racing an I wouldn't be able to tell it from real quality information.
Then we would have to decide on whan to remove it. How long between good posts would we wait? What would be the required good post count?
There is a reputation, karma, cheer feature that could be activated. This would allow forum members (or members who pay their fees?) to give a positive vote to a quality post. It would allow the whole community to have an input into what they felt was good stuff on the forum. However it's also quite possible that people would simply all vote for the funny You-tube clips, bad jokes etc and 'pollute' the karma system.
Either way I'd be happy to hear in anyone has any insight into how we could make this work fairly, without it just being a wholly subjective award given by myself and Penfold (or all of us if that's the way we want to do it?)
Nicely said m'lud.
As it's a requisite for people to have this badge in order to get the golden member badge, I think there probably needs to be some framework in place on how it is awarded so it's fair for all. Or does there? hmm tough one. Glad it's not my call :flirty:
PEN
Quote from: Penfold;254038... I think there probably needs to be some framework in place on how it is awarded so it's fair for all.
Absolutely. And not just for the forum badge either.
This will be a separate thread but I'm determined to ensure that this new structure in no way can be perceived as a 'watering down' of our standards. I would suggest that a member with a gaming, forum and supporter badge would be someone we would all recognise as a 'Charlie' under the old system.
To that end I would suggest some common rules for the awarding of the gaming and forum badges in terms of elapsed time (from first game/first post), understanding and implementation of ethos/rules/guidelines and a total lack of "God I hope I'm never stuck in a lift with this person". :)
Oh crap, the lift has broken. :angry:
TL.
Example of a quality not quantity post, badge plxkkthx!