Idiots = Most sensible people who just want to do stuff.
This is a riff. Don’t take it seriously. My point is really about the UTILITY of badges on Discourse. IMO they are a lot of work on the back end. But for what purpose?
GrandTiddler = JeremyRuston
SeniorTiddler(s) = EricShulman
VeteranTiddler(s) = pmario etc.
MatureTiddler(s) = Telmiger etc.
YoungTiddler(s) = Newbies like me
Could also use terms like RootTiddler in place of GrandTiddler, etc etc.
(I completely missed the “don’t take this seriously” bit. my bad haha)
Badges can be anything we want them to be. They’re most interesting if we do think about what would be meaningful, which means someone taking the lead, documenting it, and running the project!
Strictly speaking, I think you’re sort of talking about Trust Levels and/or permissions. They only apply to Discourse and they are mostly shown as groups, which you can browse here https://talk.tiddlywiki.org/g
I think they are part of the Gamification attempt of Discourse.
In games it is common to get badges for special “achievements”. .. It’s OK, if you don’t care, but there may be users that actually like it, to be reminded that they have achieved something. Even if it is the information that a post they created was liked 10, 20, 50 a 100 times. …
If someone takes the time to write a reply to a question, posts links to related topics or other pages,
with the intention to help other users, I think – No – I know, that it feels good if you see, after some time, that it actually made a difference. …
Not only for the user who posted the question, but for others too, that liked your reply or followed your links.
As Boris pointed out, there is an overview, about the existing Badges and what they mean. I’m sure there is room for improvement, if we want to invest the time.
The existing Badges “come for free” and I’m sure that for some users they will actually will mean something after some time.
@pmario thanks for your considered opinion! On this point I agree with you!
@boris & @pmario, TBH I’m likely slightly “fouling-the-footpath” in that neither of my two recent queries realised there are “badges” & “statuses”. I should have distinguished them, I didn’t. I’ll look more and comment later.