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User defined/selected badges
 
   
  
 
 
After the discussion in the previous "poll" question, I have realized that what I am really hoping for is a way to find out, roughly, what fraction of the user community uses a particular OS, tool, or something like that. For example who is an emacs user. Who is still running Fedora 3 :-) These things change over time. I may eventually upgrade to a new OS, and so on.
 
I think what would make this possible, and perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to implement, would be user defined and selected badges. So, if I think it would be good to know which editors people use, I could define the badges I think would be appropriate "uses vi", "uses emacs" or whatever. Then I post a "question" asking that people select one of these badges. Actually maybe I should post the question first, to see whether or not there is any support for this particular badge!
 
If the appropriate badge has not been create yet ("uses teco") then the person who needs it can create it. Whenever a person wants to, they can add or remove user defined badges on their profile. Then all that is necessary is to have a way to search for and/or count users who have the given badge.
 
Perhaps a user would have to have a certain number of points to create such a badge. Or perhaps a user could only suggest it and the administrator would have to make it happen, perhaps after gathering comments. I don't know.
 
-Mike
 
 
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 Mike's avatar

      91
    
 
 
 
 Mike 
 
 
    asked 14 years ago 
 
 
 
 
        
 
 
 
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        like flair pins that people can put on themselves or take off any time they want?
      
 
 Evgeny's avatar Evgeny (14 years ago)   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 

        I'm not sure what a flair pin is, but that sound right.
      
 
 Mike's avatar Mike (14 years ago)   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
This seems more like a custom profile field. Badges are usually the reputation things awarded automatically by the system upon some condition.
 
 
 Nemo_bis's avatar Nemo_bis (10 years ago)   
 
 
  
 
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I think this concept is like "Decals" in various online games.  Rather than being an award/badge, it is a form of self-expression.  Though in addition, you could offer a set of decals/badges for a particular achievement, whereas "uses emacs" would not cost any karma/etc.
 
 
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 ccanonc 
 
 
    answered 14 years ago 
 
 
 
 
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        I think that's true. But it's not simply self expression. For example, what i'm really after is -- for example -- to see how many Sage users adopt Fedora 14 when it comes out :-)
      
 
 Mike's avatar Mike (14 years ago)   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 

        this might work really well, b/c on one hand people like to engage in "self-expressive" behavior online and on the other hand those decals might carry very useful information.
      
 
 Evgeny's avatar Evgeny (14 years ago)   
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 

        @Mike: In your latter case, it works either as a decal or as a Poll, or both. :-)
      
 
 ccanonc's avatar ccanonc (14 years ago)   
 
 
  
 
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