Acquiring badges in the new Community

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It would be nice if we could share the rules on how people get any badges or awards in the community.  So I thought I'd start a discussion on it, rather than just ask.

Also, yes, I'm fishing for information on how I might become a "community champion", given that I was effectively one on the previous systems.

[Thomas Schlegel]

Hi Nic,

we were asked weeks ago if we want to take part of the new Atlassian Community as so called "Community Champion".

I have no doubt, that you are the best example of a Community Champion :-)

People from Atlassian can add you to the Community Champion group.

[Leslie Lee]

Hi Nic,

The Community Champions program was built for customers only, so partners and add-on vendors aren't eligble. The first year, Community Champions were chosen by their previous activity and contributions into the Atlassian Community and after the first year, there will be an application process.

As for additional badges, we're definitely working on building that out in a thoughtful way - and in the badge definition, you'll see exactly why a badge was given (i.e. Reached 10 accepted answers). What we found in talking to customers is that they are less concerned about someone's points or badges, but instead, they care a lot about a person's expertise, so we'll be starting with leaderboards that show a person's accepted answers in a given collection as a way to show that expertise. 

You were part of the community beta because we invited our top answerers to preview and give us feedback on the community. And we are looking to give our top partners, like you, the ability to write articles and more, but we're still figuring out the rules of engagement for before we open that up. Please be patient with us!

Leslie

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That makes me feel worthless.

[Leslie Lee]

(crying emoji). What would you like to see? 

[Jamie Echlin _ScriptRunner - The Adaptavist Group_]

Leslie - it's just that the process seems completely arbitrary. I have the badge because I asked for it before the site went live although I also work for an expert/vendor (the same one). 

Nic was the number one contributor in the previous system... because he didn't ask for the badge - "in a year there will be an application process"?

If you look at the types of questions Nic answered, they weren't specific to our products. If you are trying to alienate the most consistent contributors to the community this seems like a great move.

[Jamie Echlin _ScriptRunner - The Adaptavist Group_]

Or at least I did have the badge, seems to have disappeared now. Awesome.

[Daniel Wester]

Wow. So in a single statement you null and void everyone that is part of the ecosystem. Or the folks that gave you feedback in your beta. Not sure if that's a wise thing since at some point you'll be asking people to invest their time in giving your feedback and what you're essentially saying is that you don't care.

What a lot of us in the ecosystem do is invest in the Atlassian ecosystem (a lof participate in AUGs or provide other content) - guess you want us all to stop that now?

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

Hmm, if there is a single account on this site who deserves an "extremely valuable contributor" badge or marker or whatever, then it should be Nic.

(Just my .05$.)

[Monique vdB]

Thanks all for the input -- we are doing some thinking on how to recognize MVPs who happen to be partners. I hope to have a more specific update for you soon. 

[MattS]

This issue is crucial to the survival of the Atlassian community.

You could gather data about how many people reply to questions over the next few months and then compare it with aac metrics. Without involved partners and add-on vendors, I fear that you would see huge reduction.

"Please be patient with us" - this phrase commonly means that some major issues were not addressed properly during the design and beta phases. A list of specific actions being taken is more useful.

[Mirek]

"Think tiwce before you do and .. and ask us (community) for final opinion .. not test on us or force your internal thinking that this ot that will be good. People are using Atlassian producs for more years... That is the best group to ask for feedback (before the change!)

[Jeff Tillett]

Digging an old thread, however I think an explaination of what badges are available, and how to earn them, would go far to help build usage in the new system.

[Brendan Cosgrove]

Here's the badges I see in my profile and to me they seem pretty clear in terms of what activity I would need to do to earn them, but these seem to be separate from the "COMMUNITY CHAMPION" type labels.  I'm new so I haven't earned any yet.

[Maarten Arts]

Good question. I'm also interested to see what "Partner Champion" means, for example.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm not sure it's the best name to be fair.  I'd rather separate them out and have simple "champions", then an indicator that some of us happen to be partners as well (I certainly think that should be clear to community, but it's not why we post for the most part)

[Maarten Arts]

Do you know what it means when someone is a "champion"? Regardless of what kind of champion they are.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That they were selected by Atlassian to be a champion.  Some of them were chosen because of their activity, but others I'm not so sure about - it was notable that some of them were not particularly active (or even here) until a few months before the change from Answers to Community.

[Maarten Arts]

Ah ok. I'm not really following this discussion since I'm not very active outside of topics that concern our add-ons. But I think it could be nice to show people who they're talking to.

I'm mostly here to keep an eye on users who ask questions about our add-ons. If the tag for one of our add-ons is used, it would be nice to show them that I'm part of the add-on team. This adds some credibility to the information I'm sharing as opposed to information from another user.

Similarly to how it's different when an Atlassian answers a question as opposed to a normal user.

(not that the community won't work without it, but that's what I expected from the 'badges' thing)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, that's one of the reasons a lot of us put our company name in our display names, to show we might be associated with an add-on.

[Monique vdB]

We have two things coming to address this, Maarten:

1. On the topic of showing people who they're talking to, "hovercards" are on our roadmap, which will let you hover over the person's name and find out more information about them.

2. Some information about how to be considered for the Champion program. Over the next quarter, we'll be looking at the threshholds we set for new and emerging Champions and see if they make sense.  Generally, answering lots of questions is what will get you there (similar to how karma worked on Atlassian Answers). 

[Monique vdB]

I'm going to close this thread since we did in fact adjust our Champion program to include partners. (And some even won awards at Summit!)

Feel free to create a new thread if you'd like to continue to discuss badge organization or Champion program guidelines.