Badges testimonials, anyone?

Continuing the discussion from Fedora Badges: long term maintenance discussion🙇:

Hey everyone! In this week’s Fedora Social Hour we were discussing the fun of Badges, and several people mentioned how motivated they are by badges. I thought, hey, that’s actually useful for the above-linked discussion — getting interest and resources on development. So, here’s a thread to post testimonials about how badges motivate you. Share your stories here! (Note: collecting positive notes only. If you’ve got complaints or other observations, please start different threads.)

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Badges was one of the primary motivators for me (and for couple of friends of mine). When we first discovered the Fedora Community (in ~2016), badges was our “metrics” to calculate our contribution growth and of course, the gamification/minor competition sides of things…

Not just in what we were doing but exploring what other badges are there and how can we get them!

  • Why did I set my timezones, first “vacation”, keys…? badges!
  • Why I started tagging packages? badges!
  • Why I chaired my first meeting without knowing zodbot commands? badges! (oh, everyone should volunteer to chair meetings regardless of knowing zodbot commands – it’s easy to learn)
  • Why I helped a friend “in public”? to get karma! – to get badges! :slight_smile:
    … you get the point!

so yeah, there are many incidences that I can count where I have done things just for a badge!
My contribution in QA helped me get internship in the QA team
and I like to think my work in QA helped me get a job in the CPE team.
Now, I have been in mindshare, council, lead a couple of small initiatives and lurk around a lot of Fedora corners.
I love Fedora Badges and I definitely think council should find a way to get some love to it

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As a mentor for new contributors, badges are so helpful to me in terms of providing a list of defined, reasonably-scoped, and achievable goals for first-time contributors so they can understand how they can best help and get started, and the bonus of getting a cute badge once completed is motivational for them :slight_smile:

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Badges is a cool thing, and it’s an enjoyable part of Fedora membership and participation.

It’s a nice way to offer users and contributors more recognition, and I really like how badges help recognize, encourage and highlight the many different ways you can contribute to the Fedora community.

it’s a great way for Fedora members to know what they’re doing has an impact.

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I love the achievement of getting a badge. Its good motivation too! Its kinda reminds me of unlocking an achievement in Minecraft a little bit haha! Its also cool to see other peoples badges as well and how they got them and they’re a great symbol of what things people contributed to the community as well and have recognition for what they did too!

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Personally, I found the gamification Badges bring incredibly natural, where I was usually burned out of this type of thing from the places I worked before. It made me become even more interested in contributing to the project then I already was, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me to take the first step into actually becoming part of a team.

I do get a bit frustrated that some of them aren’t working quite well (at least for me, since I didn’t get a lot of them that I should), but seeing the ones I already have and the ones I can reasonably get helps me create a path onto contributing more and more in many ways I normally wouldn’t.

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I started as an Outreachy intern in 2013 doing Badges Design with @duffy as my mentor. Over the years I have designed 100’s of badges and learned so much about what and how different parts of Fedora work. It’s been a source of artistic, professional, and friendship-y fulfillment for me, as well as a way to connect with people doing all different roles within the Fedora Project and all over the world.

When I first went to Flock in 2014 I met many people who were SO excited about the designs I created. Although I knew people enjoyed badges, I didn’t realize how much they loved them until I interacted with the Fedora community in person. I felt a sincere appreciation for the work I had done during my internship and my illustration style. That sense of fulfillment, @duffy’s constant encouragement, as well as the friends I made led me to stay involved in Fedora: leading the Badges sub-project, organizing workshops/hackfests, and pushing for improvements in the Badges system.

After years of doing freelance graphic design and working retail/office jobs, I realized my work with Fedora Badges and the Fedora community gave me more professional fulfillment than any thing else I had done. That’s when I decided I wanted to work with Fedora for a job- and within a year or so the FCAIC job posting went up! I knew that was my shot at taking all my community experience and other professional skills I picked up along the way to work with Fedora full time. I am so grateful and honored to have been chosen for the role- the last 3 years have been a wonderful but challenging time of growth and success for me as FCAIC.

This is all to say: Badges is what brought me to Fedora, what kept me in Fedora, and what led me to becoming FCAIC. They mean so very much to me. :blue_heart: :blue_heart:

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One of the factors that made me want to stay back after joining and keep contributing to the community in the long term was due to the constant appreciation, I received with the badges I was awarded for my contributions. Whenever I got to see someone else’s profile on Fedora Badges and they seemed to have a shiny badge that I did not, it made me want to step up my contributions because guess what - “I want that shiny badge for myself too!”. That way, I was organically discovering more avenues of contributing within the wider Fedora Project and slowly, I started using Badges to help onboard/motivate new contributors with my involvements in the Fedora Join and Fedora Mentored Projects.

For folks who don’t know about Fedora Badges yet or have not yet sunk themselves into the pursuit of awesome digital rewards, I would ask you to head to https://badges.fedoraproject.org/user/<your-FAS-username-here> to check out the list of badges that you have earned, your rank within the Fedora Badges users and share it among your Fedora friends. Do take a look a look at their list of badges and their rank within the community, because trust me - it feels great to contribute with a purpose and have your contributions appreciated/rewards in one way or another and Fedora Badges does just that. Here’s my profile, by the way, Fedora Badges (fedoraproject.org) - Don’t judge! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I like the idea of Badges but they seemed odd to me at the time (years ago). Like, I don’t even remember what I did to get the badges I have (which are few) and it’s not clear to me what is considered Badge Worthy. Don’t lose hope, that’s more a function of my limited involvement and not a stab at folks running the project and designing badges. I just thought I’d share from the perspective of someone who only has limited involvement in contributing to Fedora outside of Discord and a few threads in the Discussion boards.

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For me badges have been such a nice way to receive validation and appreciation for the work I’ve done on the project. It’s nice to know that what I do will be recognized or that there are opportunities to be recognized out of the blue. The positive reinforcement has been so encouraging since I started. If Badges were more front and center, I would love to make a concerted effort to collect as many as I could!

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Badges and Fedora Translations

A lot of great points were already mentioned here about Badges, but I wanted to add two of my own as well:

First, Badges was also what brought me to Fedora—quite literally, before anything else, as my Fedora Badges registration date was 2014-01-01 and I would go on to register a FAS account a year or so after my Badges account. Badges was the enticing “stepping stone” for me as an outsider to know what kind of things I could do in Fedora, and to get validation of my contributions at an early, critical point for me. I did a lot of distro-hopping in 2013, but I think not just using Fedora but also earning some badges for things like package tagging contributing to me sticking around and later doing more and more in Fedora.

Second, Fedora Badges are incredibly useful for encouraging both new and old Fedorans to try new things and dip their toes into new ideas, new teams and people, and new technologies. Creating a Fedora Badge for an activity or type of contribution is a powerful way to call out that contribution pathway in the project. Speaking for myself and also for others, I have seen folks try something new or adopt a new approach in an existing task just because they can earn a Badge for doing it. Badges are useful incentives to encourage Fedorans to try new ideas, break out of our comfort zones, or explore technology that might be emerging and challenging the status quo. Fedora Badges supports the Fedora Project in staying on the innovative edge of Linux because it encourages the Fedora Community to be innovative and expose ourselves to new ideas, new teams and people, and new technologies.

And look where you are now! :clap:
(I take it this is the new FCAIC speaking)

I’m curious as to how that works. I’m aware there are badges for many different activities. But I, personally, never looked into them on the grounds of what may get me another badge. At best, and that’s no less a valuable achievement of having badges, it may have directed me to parts of Fedora, that I never looked into before. Creating awareness, interest, which resulted in participation. Badges are a pat on the shoulder for me, saying: Good work!

:shushing_face: Did I mention that we are working hard getting Badges back in shape? Because right now, unfortunately, many badges are simply not awarded.

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