Bring back Happy Heart badges

[GeneralGuy]

I feel that we should bring back the Happy Heart, Super Happy Heart and Ultra Happy Heart badges. I've discussed this in great length with @VinnyVideo privately and he agrees that we should bring them back. They incentivize good behavior, as it will give members a reason to follow the rules. Also, it's MFGG tradition.

[Mario]

Don't we have them?

Edit: I guess not. I think they were weirdly broken before if/when we did. There's a lot of issues to consider. I remember there was one case where Pedigree lost his due to a mis-warn and they weren't able to restore it.

Proud member of the Shadow █████████████

Interested in web development? Check out Super Mario Web Development. Wahoo!

 

""We choose to go to the [Suggestions board] not because it's easy, but because it's hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
- John F. Kennedy"
- gothgirlgangblastermaster

[Mors]

I removed them a while ago, or to be precise I made them hidden because they didn't work at all. I believe it has to do with the warning system being kind of wonky in MyBB. But idk the official reason.

I never liked Happy Heart anyways, as Mario mentioned if a staff member warns you for an invalid reason you just lose it. And to regain the ultra variant you gotta wait 2 years.

I also highly doubt that it encourages people to behave well much really. I mean it's not like most people break the rules on purpose. And for those who do we have better punishments, like, uh, the impending danger of a ban.

People also don't care about badges as much, probably because of the overabundance of them but that's the topic of a different thread.

3DS: 4313-6691-8820
Switch: SW-7679-1093-9792

play my fangame pls

[GeneralGuy]

@VinnyVideo says it wouldn't be too hard to port over the code we used on the phpBB boards to automate this.

[Hyper]

@VinnyVideo says it wouldn't be too hard to port over the code we used on the phpBB boards to automate this.

Initially we expect it shouldn't be that hard to implement. But after several attempts when I was a tech admin, we're going deeper into the rabbit hole since MyBB's warning system is broken and difficult to understand.

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Main Site | YouTube | Bluesky | My OC

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[Mario]

I'm neutral about it.

I don't think they encourage good behavior because the rules aren't about good behavior. I'm not sure the staff should be judging who is behaving well or not either. I think we could really use some work on what it means or what it should mean.

However, as a thanks for being part of the community is nice to have and I feel like it's pretty close to being something good for that. Maybe we should focus more on badges that reward community participation beyond competitions and submissions? I'm not sure what those would be like but I feel like happy heart is the only one not tied to those or is event-based.

Proud member of the Shadow █████████████

Interested in web development? Check out Super Mario Web Development. Wahoo!

 

""We choose to go to the [Suggestions board] not because it's easy, but because it's hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
- John F. Kennedy"
- gothgirlgangblastermaster

[Mors]

I'm neutral about it.

I don't think they encourage good behavior because the rules aren't about good behavior. I'm not sure the staff should be judging who is behaving well or not either. I think we could really use some work on what it means or what it should mean.

However, as a thanks for being part of the community is nice to have and I feel like it's pretty close to being something good for that. Maybe we should focus more on badges that reward community participation beyond competitions and submissions? I'm not sure what those would be like but I feel like happy heart is the only one not tied to those or is event-based.

Honestly, yeah the whole badge system needs rethinking tbh. I'll make a thread about that actually.

And for the record I wouldn't mind reintroducing them as a badge based on how long you've been registered for. Or maybe it could be based on the total number of posts?

3DS: 4313-6691-8820
Switch: SW-7679-1093-9792

play my fangame pls

[Evil Yoshi Toes]

I think they'd work a lot better as just badges that evolve the longer you've been here with no ties to behavior. They're nice in a sense that they show people you've been here for a long time, but they don't accurately display who is "good" and who isn't and I don't think that there should be a badge that does this. The staff is here to make sure order is maintained, but that shouldn't have such a direct effect on who is viewed as a good member. I doubt many people take the badge that seriously anyway, but just in concept it's a bit flawed in my opinion.

I think the badge system is really cluttered right now and could use a lot of work, but I'm not sure what kind of work that'd be because I don't know exactly how we'd implement badges better.

[GeneralGuy]

That's actually a great idea.

[Pedigree]

All Ultra Happy Heart encourages is for you to lurk and post less so you don't lose it. The problem is that every mod team we've had reaches outside the rules to warn people sometimes, though that may just be a symptom of terribly written rules that don't cover enough situations. Also removing the Happy Heart when you receive a warning conflicts with the idea that MFGG mods keep pushing over the years that a warning is not a punishment but a reminder.

Badges are rarely ever looked at anyways, especially when you consider most of them were either ported from the phpbb, are broken or are already at max stacks so you don't get a visual indicator when you earn any more of them. I think to rekindle interest in them you've got to wipe out the irrelevant ones, increase max stacks and give them a graphical upgrade/make them look more interesting. But when you're looking at which badges to cut from the assortment, Happy Hearts should definitely be on the chopping block.

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I think they'd work a lot better as just badges that evolve the longer you've been here with no ties to behavior. They're nice in a sense that they show people you've been here for a long time, but they don't accurately display who is "good" and who isn't and I don't think that there should be a badge that does this. The staff is here to make sure order is maintained, but that shouldn't have such a direct effect on who is viewed as a good member. I doubt many people take the badge that seriously anyway, but just in concept it's a bit flawed in my opinion.

I think the badge system is really cluttered right now and could use a lot of work, but I'm not sure what kind of work that'd be because I don't know exactly how we'd implement badges better.

I don't agree with awarding people for having an account for [x] years. Oldbie elitism caused a lot of drama in the past and I have no doubt that it'd rear its ugly head again and create a rift if you were to implement such badges. Gloating about sticking around and looking down on the newbies is not behavior we want to return.

 

[VinnyVideo]

Temporarily getting rid of HH badges makes sense - it would be a lot of tedious manual work to try to keep them up-to-date. On the phpBB boards, we had a script that automated the process of awarding, revoking, and upgrading HH/UU/SHH badges. This script would require a few tweaks to work on MyBB, but it shouldn't be extremely difficult if your knowledge of PHP is deeper than mine.

Happy Heart badges could be a (small) incentive to get people to be active and good citizens. But if you lose a 25 x 25 image on your profile for breaking the rules on a Mario fansite, that's hardly the worst thing that could happen to you in the game of life.

What constitutes bad behavior? Who gets to decide? That's an extremely difficult question, whether you're talking about a Mario fansite, a workplace, a school, a family, or a society. That's where we humans have a lot of our most colorful debates about ethics, law, religion, philosophy, psychology, and all that good stuff.

However, it's rare that people get board warnings nowadays - at current count, a grand total of five people have gotten warned in 2019. People who get warned are almost always people who have already been pushing the limits of what MFGG staff consider behavior detrimental to the community - warnings tend to happen to people who have already made a lot of questionable posts.

Of course, we could still tweak the system and award HH badges based on post count or posts made in the past year. This would still be a small reward for members who stay active.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Evil Yoshi Toes]

Perhaps the post count idea is better then since it encourages actual participation.

[Mario]

I don't see post count being a good metric on its own to base any kind of award on. Maybe thread count would be a good start- more threads give us more opportunities to discuss more, after all.

But overall I'm not sure there is a god metric to go by. Maybe we can come up with some algorithm based on how often someone posts to award them a happy heart based on how active they are currently?

I dunno. Seems like a difficult thing to narrow down but I hope people can brainstorm some ideas so we don't just settle on whatever people think of first.

Proud member of the Shadow █████████████

Interested in web development? Check out Super Mario Web Development. Wahoo!

 

""We choose to go to the [Suggestions board] not because it's easy, but because it's hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
- John F. Kennedy"
- gothgirlgangblastermaster

[VinnyVideo]

It might be better to use post count in past year (or even requiring a post every month). This would reward participating regularly and give an incentive (even a small one) to keep members coming back.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Pedigree]

Post count has never been a good measure of how active someone is and I really don't understand why you are so into post counts, Vinny.

Making an award based on post count will only reward people for spamming/flooding, which doesn't make sense because you have rules against that.

Why would you reward people other than stir for breaking the rules???

 

[GeneralGuy]

Post count has never been a good measure of how active someone is and I really don't understand why you are so into post counts, Vinny.

Making an award based on post count will only reward people for spamming/flooding, which doesn't make sense because you have rules against that.

Why would you reward people other than stir[/] for breaking the rules???

Plus it'll bring back post count elitism.

[Pedigree]

I forgot post count elitism was a thing because of how ridiculous a concept it is, but yeah, you're right!

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I remember Vinny himself telling me he was a more active staff member than me because of his post count and I'm dying now. Rofl

 

[Mario]

Yeah I definitely don't think post count should be much of a factor, if any. It's great when people contribute posts to lots of threads, but I don't think there's any additional reward needed other than the satisfaction of being a lively part of the community.

Proud member of the Shadow █████████████

Interested in web development? Check out Super Mario Web Development. Wahoo!

 

""We choose to go to the [Suggestions board] not because it's easy, but because it's hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
- John F. Kennedy"
- gothgirlgangblastermaster

[VinnyVideo]

Fun Fact: Happy Heart badges have always required a minimum post count. They were intended to reward members who were active and didn't cause trouble - it wouldn't make sense to give these to members who registered and never posted.

Course clear! You got a card.

[GeneralGuy]

True