Community badge names - your help needed!

Have you looked at other forums? Common names I see are “Active Contributor”, “Power User” and “Guru”, there are many more and that's before you get sarcastic. Don't re-invent the wheel again :-)

Hi Roger, those names you quote are more for ‘levels’ in those communities i.e. recognition for how ‘active’ you are in the forum and how much you contribute. They're not necessarily indicative of how helpful or valuable your contributions are. 

We're looking to recognise quality content over quantity which will help to identify those in our community that are well respected and give great advice rather than those who (using an example level name from another forum I'm a member of) have ‘Too much spare time on their hands’ ?

@Roger Greenwood Thank you! As Lisa said this is more a quality badge but I think guru is along the right lines. Just need something without the religious connotations. 

I was also hoping to get a feel of what level of formality community members prefer. There are lots of very casual terms for quality type badging (know-it-all is the standard term in the software for this particular badge) but my inclination is that the community might prefer something a bit more formal. Am I wrong?

Hi Evanna,

If your only gripe with ‘Guru’ is its religious connotations then I can offer a few alternatives from my thesaurus

Sage (with the next obvious step below being ‘Onion’ ?)

Oracle

Pundit

Best wishes

Sage and onion …

If not vegetables then fruits - lemon or banana might be ones to avoid…

What purpose has such a label and who can see it ?- 

I can imagine it might be rather fun if folk could not see their own, but with the wrong rules might lead to inappropriate suggestions like “smaughtars” (*) ‘windbag’  or ‘trouble maker’.

Also how it is to be used -I presume there is no intention to for example censure the least helpful 10% of users or anything, but any label (or equally the absence of one that others have) that may be read by others as indicating ‘newbie’ or ‘incompetent’ is potentially divisive and therefore a  bad thing.

Also very few folk are omnipotent,  so an expert in pneumatic may like to be flagged as such, but it does not mean that his/her advice on power electrics or algebra is any good.

Mike.

(*) a reference to not the nine O clock news ‘ask he family’  link

Hi Mike

I think we can safely eliminate fruit-based names :)

Looks like you can see why picking a name became a bit tough - we don't want to imply that anyone has ALL of the answers, just that they have been helpful in the community. The idea is that, hopefully, newer community members will have a bit of a headstart when deciding how credible responses could be (a massive issue when taking to the internet for advice) and community members who spend a lot of time contributing to the community will get a bit of recognition. 

It would be a badge, like the 3 you're sporting which tots up your overall contributions, and would be visible to anyone in the community, yourself included. It would be associated with the answers functionality, so assigned based on community feedback and nothing to do with the mods. We don't need the stress!  We tried doing community awards for this sort of thing and it's HARD! Keep it simple, I say ?

Number of posts is no guarantor whatsoever of worth. In fact the number of posts can be more an indicator of narcissism than knowledge,training  and experience. Who is to judge the worth and how?  The IET’s membership process at least attempts to sort the wheat from the chaff using formalised peer review by accredited professionals.  Something similar would be needed to assign ‘merit indicators’ If the IET’s community forum is not to descend into the divisive, whacky echo chamber maelstrom which comprises social media generally.  Contributors can gauge for themselves how much their contributions are valued by the responses they receive.  In my view, for what it’s worth, badges are childish, unnecessary, and counterproductive.

Hi Evanna,

Try these ?

Best regards,?

This community seems to have a pretty small number of active members, and a pretty small number of daily posts. Is it growing? 

It's also very awkward to post from my phone, although easy enough to read. Perhaps I'm missing something there? Is there an app? Would I use it? 

Seem to me more important issues than issuing gold starts, worthwhile though it may be.