We don't need no stinking badges
These are my thoughts after reading Ranks, Roles & Badges. Ranks add value. They are a course indication of how engaged a member is with the community. I say course because there is no consideration...
Forum Discussion
Ranks: Yes, the lower end of Ranks allow users to move up quickly this is primarily designed to get newer users to engagement more often by rewarding them quicker in their earlier stages of engagement. As you progress and engage more the Ranks are harder to earn. While I agree that more sophisticated rules would allow for more definition and delineation, this platform limits me to the predefined rules based on standard engagement, such as likes, replies, topics, answers, logins etc.
Roles: As of now, the only roles we are using are LM Staff to identify our LM Employees. In the future as we build out integrations we will add more automated roles for Certified Experts, LM Exchange, Feature Requests, Inner Circle and more to allow access to special areas and identify them based on their activity outside of the Community.
Badges: While you may not need any stinking badges 😀, others in the community enjoy receiving rewards based on activity and engagement. Badges can be automated (again limited on predefined rules in the platform) awarded similar to Ranks, quick wins generate at the lower end faster to encourage more engagement., higher end badges will be harder to earn Manual badges; we are working now to add more badges for Certified Experts, LM Exchange, Feature Requests, Inner Circle. Unfortunately, for now these require manual validation to award, however in the future as we build out integrations we will add more automated badges to identify external achievements.
Lastly, while I understand users may like to know exactly how each of these are earned, posting that detail in the forums opens up opportunities for users to “game the system”, which can lead to users randomly posting just to earn badges/ranks.
...also we are still in Soft Launch, so we are adding more content and making updates based on both Customer and Employee feedback, so I do appreciate you feedback and I will work on better definition of the items mentioned, without giving away all the secrets.
Thanks again, much appreciated!
