Enhancement: Badges

[epernst]

The current badge functionality seems good, but I haven't had much time so far to explorer it or create new badges. So maybe this is already possible?

The only thing that I would love to see is a way to handle "badge-variations" without having to do any programming.

In one of the communities I'm using (not my own) but community.dynamics.com the badges are divided into groups, like Level, where the badge is awarded based on the general point level. Similar to the "Thousand Pointer" badge in Dialogue. In this community they have 8 levels, which are awarded based on how many points you have. And when you look at your profile, then you can always see how far from the next "level" you are. Another is the "Fan" badge, again with several levels, based upon how many followers you have. Badges with levels, behaves differently than other badges, as it will only show the badge with the highest level, as it's basically just replacing the existing badge registration.

Other badges:

• Category Contributor (given within a master category every six months to the top 5 members with most verified answers) - a different badge per main category
• Problem solver - based on number of verified answers - levels
• Thanks for help - given users who have verified answers - levels.
• Top 10 - given per month - to the top 10 overall contributors
• Bloggers - Levels based on how many blog posts did they post.
• Profile Badges
• - 100% complete profile
• - Connected - LinkedIn/Facebook/Youtube/Twitter etc.
• - A picture is worth a 1000 words (profiles who have uploaded profile picture)

Besides the "normal" badges that the user earn based on points/activity, then I would love to see the ability to manually add specific badges to users. Like adding an MVP badge, for MVP's who are active on the site. And special badges for "Microsoft Employees", "Moderators" and others. But could also be "Competition Winners". In my current system, the way I'm handling this is by assigning a "badge" logo to the permission group. So I have a permission group for MVP's, one for Microsoft Employees etc.

It should be possible to divide the badges into different groups, so that they can be showed together. Especially when it comes to the ones with the different levels.

It should also be possible to prioritize the different badges to set which order they show up in the user profile.