Ezynell

I think a mix of making them all simply brony badges and also adding in surprise badges for doing something that shows loyalty would be great. The problem with the Brony badges is that they'd all have do be decently difficult to get (saying they're all on the same level) so that it's at least very difficult to collect all of them. The "Surprise badges" thing had been part of my idea from the start, that's what I meant by "Create something new and innovative for the forums" under the Veteran tag. The elements would be a cool idea, but could possibly encourage the most feared thing out of this: the spam. Anyways, thanks for being the biggest contributor to this so far XD A problem that's been going through discussion is how many of the members (myself included) are probably achievement perfectionists, and that could cause a mass amount of people registering for that. It would probably be one of the ones not given to members of the team, but members that had made at least 25 quality signatures to discourage people to spam join things like that. It would also be made so it would not be possible to achieve all of them because customs would be made for custom activities (Ex: A custom one for Neikos for designing the MLPForums chrome extension)

As you can see, I went back through the OP and crossed out a bunch of the possible achievements that could cause problems based on such things. I can understand completely how you feel and I'm not gonna lie, you drove the nail in with that Feld0 analogy. It's something that has worn off for me, being one of the more veteran members, but I did feel under a bunch of people when I first joined the forums, which is one of the reasons I made such a hit for post count. This being my first forum didn't help either and I made a decent amount of mistakes in doing so. I don't even notice the ranks under names anymore but that's probably because I'm honestly at a height where I can be socially secure. I can relate to your position though, and am willing to add in any suggestion that you think may fix it up on top. After all, I don't even know if it's possible to do anyways, and if it was, it may be a manual thing, where admins actually hand out the awards and personally judge for completion. One of the issues I've had with others complaints about my ideas were that they provided no solution and pretty much a constant repost of very general problems. If you can think of any achievements you'd like to add as possible ones or see any you would like off of the list, then just tell me.

Thank you for your considerate response, I do believe that the "out-of-place" feeling you described could fit under "new members may feel ostracized over veterans" already in the OP, but I do have a question. Do you feel that the badges already distributed around the forum (under the avatars) boost elitism and a hierarchical standpoint for the forums? Personally I think that badges only on ones profile would have less effect then those visible by all members constantly while posting, but I'd be willing to hear your opinion on the subject.

It looks like were both pretty finished here then, I've included some of the points you mentioned in the OP in case one of the mods want's a summary of possible problems that this could cause and possible solutions. If you would like me to add anything to it, feel free to ask. Thanks for the input, added to the top. Not anyone can just join the Avatar team or Signature team if they wanted to though, you have to at least know how to use the tools you need to use. And that doesn't include MS paint. Like I said in the earlier posts, these were not thought through and would be if this ever got through the moderating team. Your mention of the sig and avatar crew issue was also mentioned by Power Ten, but will be added to the OP with his. Thanks again for considering the idea. When I put in "moderate out of forum groups" I was thinking of our TF2 server mods, minecraft mods, and synchtube party mods.

These were just thrown together examples. If this idea passed, I can assure you that it would turn out much different from what I offered Point taken and taken of the example list, but as stated above, those were just some off of the top of my head things.

I do really like the badges we currently have in place and wouldn't want them to be replaced by any that this led into because first of all, these ones are nice, efficient, welly designed, and not taken to seriously, and second, my idea would use multiple badges, and depending on how many became used, it could lead up to clutter. My original idea was for it to only be on the forum and an optional embed in the signature area. Although I see where your going with this, even is someone wanted forum recognition so bad that bad, I don't see how putting their desire for attention into helping out the community could possibly be a bad thing. Also, you kinda crossed exactly what you said a few minutes ago. I'm trying to asses and respond to every opinion shown on this topic and it's difficult not to notice... "Sigs are five minute job. 30mins for a .gif. It's a freaking picture. <.<" - belittlement of work done by other members "I have made over a thousand, gimmie stamps already." - exaggerated bragging "Theregoestheforum.jaypeg" - sarcasm "I never use sites that have badges, members are shit in those." - belittlement of other communities and ironically more sarcasm and personal insults in the post I'm quoting you in right now. I sincerely apologize if your having an off day or something of the likes, but I would appreciate it if you took it out somewhere else. Yes, I already addressed that in my response to Dragonshy: "Yes, I agree the badges were an amazing addition and I also see how this could quickly become the cause for allot of spammy behavior the same way that the chat room did when a "post count admission fee" was put on it." Thanks for your feedback, but she does have a few relevant points that should be considered. This could cause forum spam if the kinks weren't worked out. Also, responding with another insult is never a nice thing, but I can see it wasn't intentionally that way.

There's a difference between getting a reward for doing things from the bottom of your heart, and doing things in order to get a reward. As I said, Marco23p has created 75-100 signatures for forum members without expecting anything in return. Plus frame by frame GIF's take a little more time then even 30 minutes to find pictures to go in the background, find vectors to go in the foreground, create them, frame by frame them, then upload them, and go back through the thread to quote the original poster. Even if they did, 100x30 is 3,000 minutes, and I doubt anyone would spend that much effort and time into getting an achievement on a forum. I fail to see how the forum would be reduced to worthlessness if people received icons for being active. I would honestly take what you said into consideration, but your being vary vague with it and frankly, quite rude and sarcastic. I really am not trying to start up anything here, but if you disagree with this idea it's fine to state so but please do it in a way that's either understandable or not offensive. Saying you would need to be helpful on the forum to be a forum member is like saying you would need to be a moderator to be a forum member, they hold almost no relation. I don't think these achievements would provide advantages, tolerance with the mods, or hidden awards for the ones who got them. I can see what your saying about the awards favoring quantity over quality, and that is true for what I sketched out. But that was just a quickly done rough outline. If this was possible and got through with Feld0, i'm sure it would be ironed over as many times possible to try to encourage beneficial forum use. I also don't see these as separators between members although I can see how others could. Seeing them as separating units would already make the forum an extremely visible hierarchy at the moment with all of the badges representing post count. As for your last line, it seems like you avoid them without the personal experience of actually being on one. Some of the members can be quite nice and I think one of the top 3 largest pony forums is one with an excess of badges. I'll try to get the link if I can find it. Once more, if you want to explain to me in detail some of the reasons why this might negatively effect the forums I'm completely open to that, please don't throw in small insults along the way. This is just an idea that's been talked about before here and I just wanted a clarifying response. Yes, I agree the badges were an amazing addition and I also see how this could quickly become the cause for allot of spammy behavior the same way that the chat room did when a "post count admission fee" was put on it. Thanks for your response! Personally, I don't think he will agree to it either, he's been rather on the negative side about this topic in the past, but not in an extremist way. I wouldn't think they would appear under the avatar along side the badges though, rather a thing on your profile and maybe an optional addition to be able to embed them into someones signature if they so desired.

I've seen that one before! It's hilarious yet depressing how ignorant people can be...

Oh, that reminds me, we do have them. These used to be really active just a few months back, they were really well organized, but died down quite a bit. With a little work, we may be able to bring them back.

That also puts allot of pressure on the mods to secure forum equilibrium. I think that it would be better as "fan clubs" instead of separate "herds"

I don't see snobbery rating in this at all. Most of the people who would stay here long enough to get any of these wouldn't be here to brag anyways. I just thought of this as sort of something given as acknowledgement for the work they do for the forums. In the first example, I didn't have Marco23p's profile for no reason at all, he's made over 75 (maybe over 100 now) Signatures for the forums and has even gone on to make avatars. On top of that, most of them are GIF's which take quite a hefty load of time to make, and he doesn't get near the acknowledgement it deserves. Hopefully the newer members will see it as something to motivate them to be more active and helpful in the forums, as I hope for many of them to be based off of helping the forum grow and helping develop things for it rather then just around post count and stuff of similar nature. I've been to a few communities with "badges" in them and not once did I feel belittled by more veteran members with more than I.

http://mlpforums.com/topic/13709-proposal-forum-badges/

Thanks for the run, guys. I would really like to thank all of you that contributed to this topic as a whole and provided not only insight, but possible issues in management and implementation. I would like to especially thank those who offered feedback regarding different solutions and possible other methods of using forum badges that stayed to the end and responded and reacted to the information I presented. Although this idea did not go through, responding to comments and criticism not only taught me better communication habits, but earned me the respect and friendship of a few kind forum members. In case you would like to go over and review the topic as a whole, I have it spoiler'd down here.

It's something of relevant importance, and it's pretty easy to obtain if you have a decent amount of humor/skill and come in at the right time. As it's been proven to me before, brohoofs/ likes are more for fun then anything, and anypony who feels bad about that sort of stuff takes forums way to seriously.

Audacity doesn't require any musical talent whatsoever. It's solely a recording program. I use it to record audio for YouTube videos. I have something similar in place, I torrent things to try them out. Games or programs that I figure I'll actually use, such as PhotoShop, Minecraft, and PowerDirector, I will buy promptly after (usually a few weeks) and others I just delete anyways. The glory of open source programs. I actually feel they might be the future for companies. Some of them, like Thunderbird and OpenJDK, completely destroy their corporate combatants in weight and ease of use, and allot of them, such as Inkscape, Blender, OpenOffice, 7zip and GIMP are on the rise.

What? Why?