New Community Badges!

[Renee_Carney]

This content is over 24-months old. While the resource is still valuable to the Community, it is important to evaluate the content to ensure that it is still relevant and reliable.

When we updated the community ranking system, we focused on finding an authentic way to represent a member’s reputation and investment in our community. We based these ranks on a combination of core behaviors over time, such as posts, accepted solutions, kudos received, and ‘member since’.

And now, it’s time to bring badges into the picture. We see badges as a way to elevate members and recognize them in ways that transcend rank or community.

For years we’ve marveled at the collaboration, openness, helpfulness, relevance, and inspiration you’ve all demonstrated. It would give us ‘all the feels’ to find a way to finally show our gratitude that is timely and specific.

Read on to learn how we enabled badging in the community. It may just delight you.

Badges Repurposed

Instead of taking the traditional approach of ‘badging for bragging rights’ (where you get a badge for doing something ‘right’ and glowing about it to all your peeps), we are flipping the model and “bragging by badging right” (glowing about you to all our peeps for the right reasons)! We are repurposing badges as a way to give out digital compliments to our awesome members.

We want badges to have an emotional impact. Members should feel good when they earn one! And, together, we will have a tangible way to amplify our unique community culture! Yes, badges will still have the same system triggers that deploy them, but we hope they will elicit a smile, not a shrug. Instead of a badge for changing your profile pic, we’ll surprise you with a badge that celebrates the way you express yourself!

Call it semantics. Call it sensical. But it’s definitely a time we all need more TLC and recognition for the social-emotional strengths that drive this incredible community.

Badges for Nourishment

What feeds our inner panda? Bamboo, of course! We chose bamboo as the design template for our core badges because it signifies many characteristics that exist in the community.

• Bamboo fosters growth. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet.
• Bamboo is highly diverse. There are 1500+ different species of varying shapes, colors, sizes of bamboo.
• Bamboo overcomes adversity. Bamboo can survive in extreme environments (including an atomic bomb).
• Bamboo is the strongest building material. It’s even stronger than steel.

Check out the first set of bamboo-themed badges by going to your profile page and clicking on “view all badges.” There are badges already visible there that outline the badging criteria. And, there are hidden badges that only show up when you’ve met certain conditions (we’ve gotta keep something sweet in that panda diet).

Badges Will Evolve

We’re not done! While this first phase of our badging strategy is limited to the behaviors within our (Khoros) community platform, we hope to integrate other systems and channels into our process.

Whether you earn 10 different badges and remain a “community participant” or collect 3 badges and level-up to “community contributor”, we know you will enjoy the grove of bamboo sprouting across the community!

If you have any questions or feedback about roles, ranks, badges, we look forward to hearing them in the comments below!