The Websites & Apps and Design Teams are working on a revamp for our beloved Fedora Badges! (For more info on the revamp check out the charters for the engineering and design aspects.) As we dive into the badges system on all sides to improve and revamp the system, we discovered something regarding the breakdown of badges for each of the categories. This is our approximate current breakdown:
Category
Number of Badges
Content
91
Community
132
Event
256
Quality
57
Development
96
Misc
13
A couple things are immediately evident:
We have a disproportionate number of event badges
The Quality category is also sorely underrepresented
With the desire to have even more badges for events like Flock the team began to discuss how to address the disparity in the number of Event badges compared to the other categories. I propose the following:
Keep the Events category for attendee badges (e.g. showing up at Flock, Flock Socials, Release Parties, or third party events)
Move Contributor, Organizer, or other related events badges to Community or Content (e.g. this badge, where you were a speaker, organizer, etc, would move to Community)
Move specific FAD/Test Day/Other badges to respective categories (e.g. this badge would move to quality as a test related badge)
Addressing the lack of Quality badges will come- partially from moving the Test Day Badges to the quality category- but also after addressing some of the broken parts of the backend that were dealing with automation of these types of badges. This is on the list of things to work through for the Badges revamp. [1]
I am interested to gather feedback and input from the community before making these changes- so please add your thoughts for discussion
I think separating the event attendee and event contributor badges makes sense. What I’m not sure of is why the disparity is a problem. Event badges are by nature going to have more because each year’s event is new. But submitting Bodhi karma is the same whether I do it this year or next.
For me, the main benefit to categories is going on a search to find new badges to add to my collection. With event badges, that doesn’t really work, so I can just ignore the whole category. In general, speaking only for the way I interact with the badges platform, the categories aren’t typically something I notice/use.
So we use the Fedora colors for the categories, and they are kind of tidy as is. That being said- we do have a new Fedora blue that we could potentially add into the mix. 6 is a nice round number tho The goal behind the proposal is a more even distribution of badges into existing categories.
I think the thread on this badges ticket gives a lot more context, but in essence, its an issue of accessibility, imo. Attending, speaking at, or even organizing at events is a privilege that not all can afford- and is why we limited event badges to begin with. You’re probably right that bc events are recurring there will always be more event badges than others, but we can work to even things out a bit. The badge system should not reinforce recognizing privileged activities dis-proportionally.
in that badge ticket, @jflory7 requested that we change our guidelines on our past limits on event badges. He pointed out that some folks who assist with events don’t even get to attend (e.g. design or marketing activities) and we also have virtual events that we need support for these days. The idea is that we should still be able to incentivize and recognize those contributors without continuing to create exponentially more event badges.
It also makes the system unbalanced from a design perspective… When you look at the all badges page, its clear that the event section has way more badges. Imo, as both a designer and community leader/manager type, that is irksome. From my perspective we should strive for a balance to incentivize all types of contributions somewhat equally. [1]
If there’s a way to track how many events someone has attended, maybe we can treat it the same way as other contributions? eg have leveled badges rather than one per event.
And we should probably grant it for anyone who help out and not just to people who attend
I agree with the suggestions made by @riecatnor regarding separation of event badges. Organizers of events serve the community and, as Marie pointed out, they sometimes don’t even get to attend the event itself.
But I also agree that event badges will always be larger in number than other categories.
I think part of the problem stems from the fact that the category is hard coded into the badge design. The colored ring determines the (primary) category of the badge. While changing a badge’s category in the backend is doable and will become easier in the new Badges, changing the design is more work. I’m not sure if we ever changed a badge’s category after it was released.
What if we could apply that colored ring dynamically based on the category set in the badges metadata? The colored ring is the same size for every badge, I assume. So, this would be a simple apply layer to badge operation. Of course, this would require yet another change to the badge design. and there are other caveats. But I wanted to throw the idea in here.
Another idea to better balance the badges would be adding some kind of weight to the categories. Have lower weight categories sorted lower down the page. That’s actually the case currently when looking at a user’s badges, e.g. bcotton. The event categorie is next to last on the page. But that’s probably just coincidence in the current layout. I’d like to see that enforced.
Additionally, we could limit the number of badges shown per category on the user’s landing page making the categories with many badges stand out less. A more or show all button than shows additional badges in a given category.
Other then the suggested category separation for event attendees and organizers, I’m leaning more towards a design / technical solution rather then rethinking the categories.
Last but not least, I’m still in favor of badge series for certain activities as I suggested in the Pagure ticket:
The goal behind the proposal is a more even distribution of badges into existing categories.
What if we could apply that colored ring dynamically based on the category set in the badges metadata? The colored ring is the same size for every badge, I assume. So, this would be a simple apply layer to badge operation. Of course, this would require yet another change to the badge design. and there are other caveats. But I wanted to throw the idea in here.