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Saturday, July 31, 2010
We don't need no stinking badges?
by Geoff Samek, published on January 31, 2010 at 8:27PM
Storyline: Product development
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How do you know if community contributors on our site are using their real names? How do you distinguish staff reporters from community contributors? How do you know who has been featured on our front page?
This weekend, The Sacramento Press launched badges to address all those concerns and more. Badges come in two varieties: merit and identity. Identity badges identify our users, what they do and their role on our site. The staff of The Sacramento Press assigns all identity badges manually.
Assigning badges will start slowly and take time. We have eight identity badges: Editorial Staff, Sacpress Staff, Editorial Interns, County Government, City Government, Law Enforcement, Fire Department and Verified Community Contributor. When an identity badge is assigned, The Sacramento Press stands behind it.
If you are a community contributor and would like to have your name verified by our staff, you can do so at most workshops as well as some Sacramento Press events.
Over time, we likely will add identity badges to identify different types of users on our site. While badges help to increase transparency on our site they are not a replacement for contributors stating who they are in their profiles and articles.
In addition to identity badges, there are merit badges, which certify achievements by members of our site. Some of them are assigned by our staff, such as workshop badges, while others are assigned automatically by our system, such as front page badges. We hope that merit badges will help readers identify talented and hard-working writers, and encourage community contributors to learn more in order to earn them.
In addition to badges, you will find many other small updates to our site, including new and more prominent RSS feeds on the profile page, as well as the ability to easily browse all of a user's articles and comments.
We hope you like the new features on our site and encourage your feedback. There is always room for improvement, sometimes, lots of room. So please feel free to dig in below with as much constructive criticism as you can think of, plus any questions you might have. We all have thick skins. If the comment section is not your forte, please send your feedback to feedback@sacramentopress.com.
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It is a necessity due to the fact that we were not accurately taking attendance of the workshops and correlating that to usernames on the site. Additionally workshops were less standardized then they will be going forward.
That's a really great question and I'm glad you asked it.
For now you can find all sorts of information about badges by going here: http://www.sacramentopress.com/badges/
From that page you will be able to find out information about every badge in the system as well as who owns each badge.
I hope that helps and thanks so much for your feedback.
Thanks for that....
http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/21205/A_Threatening_Presence_in_Sacramento
So that article would receive no badge. In terms of the quality of the article itself and its subject matter, it seems clear from the 8 thumbs down that the community does not find it to be an excellent article.
I won't be participating... Cya!
Hmm.. perhaps this was the intent all along....
I'm sorry to hear that you won't be participating in badges. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on the system. Is there any change to the system that you feel would make the system useable for you?
The intent of badges is transparency which we value from all of our contributors equally. The system of badges was devised by me personally before the website launched over 17 months ago.
You started out as a platform rag for KJ's crew, but the pesky 'community' kinda sorta demonstrated less than a liking for such suckupery... But I guess this has gotten out of hand, and ascerbic critics who can pointedly put intelligent responses to this mayor's obvious wanton powergrabs and corruption, not to mention a history that is less than honorable, are just not part and parcel of your grand design....
So, until this 'badge thingy' gets underway, I'll continue to post at will... But there is no way in HELL that I'm surrendering my attempted and ostensible anonymity to the likes of you....
I just don't trust you, sweetie...
Secondly I do really want to hear your thoughts. I have encouraged all kinds of people to come in to our office and talk to us. Unlike other publications our doors are always open and Ben Ilfeld and I both sit right up front (we are the founders of The Sacramento Press).
Our address is:
431 I Street, Suite 107
Sacramento, CA 95814
Thank you for reading and I look forward to meeting you in person (and you will not have to tell me your name when/if we meet).