User badges - new feature

Forums: Index > Planning Forum > User badges - new feature

Hello! Your friendly local product manager here :)

I'd like to take a moment to tell you about a new feature we're enabling on your wiki, which we'd love to get your feedback on - "user badges".

With user badges you can tell everyone about the cool things you are doing on this wiki by:

Adding it to your MySpace or Facebook profiles...or anywhere else you have a profile on the web
Adding it to your forum signatures
Adding it to your blog, homepage or other personalized site

To create your customized badge, head to your Special:Preferences page and click on the "User badge" tab. There you can change the look and feel of the badge to suit your personality. A couple of my own badges are shown below:

We would love to hear about what you want to showcase on the badge in the future and value your feedback. Let us know what you think below.

Visit Help:User badge for more detailed info on this feature!

Thanks, Kirkburn ( talk ) 00:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Feedback Edit

How are user badges different from any of the user boxes that so many wikis already have in place? Is there some inherent advantage to using them that we're not seeing in the help information? Right now my personal opinion is that they look too big and a bit too clunky and don't appear to really do anything different or offer anything more than what we already have available at the wiki. I'm probably missing something. I'd love to know what their purpose is. Maybe it's me, but I don't see the need for them at the moment.-- Kodia 01:41, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think they're for use on the wiki so much as other places... ie like in a forum signature or on a social networking site. -- lordebon 01:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, in that case, I think they're not that useful at all for our purposes. SOE's signature or user badges are much more identifiable and slick looking. -- Kodia 01:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed 100%. -- lordebon 01:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Lordebon is correct - it's for use all over the place, not just on Wikia. I agree about the aesthetics - we do want to make them better looking. Are there are specific ways you might suggest for doing that? Kirkburn ( talk )

00:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, right now they look somewhat disjointed... the images in the examples you listed are just kind of on there, no border or anything. An outside border, and a bit of something blending or bordering the image might make it look a bit better. You probably also don't need to explicitly label it username... just have the actual username in large letters and then "nnn Edits" underneath, for example. -- lordebon 03:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Interesting points, thanks. I agree the labelling could probably be a little less obvious. Kirkburn ( talk )

21:54, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

When does the badge update the edit count? I had 10175 like 3-4 days ago and i'm at 10324 atm -- ( Talk ) 14:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)