There is also a space for badges to come. But when are they coming and what will they be?
I thought we could use this space to provide some suggestions.
If you think it would be a good idea to add for memrise to add more badges then like or reply to this post. This topic can then act as a petition to present to memrise for more badges.
Also, if you’re reading this and you have a custom badge, please reply to this form and tell us how you got it.
Note: This is not for creating a lot of them, just creating ones that are popular. Quality rather than quantity.
So perhaps a mem used by 1000 users (when other mems were available). Or similar criteria - I don’t think it should be made too complicated though. However, the criteria should discourage gaming the system to get the badge.
Edit: One problem is that someone may copy a mem from another course. For example: user1 created a mem in the official Spanish A1 (a year ago). User2 sees the mem and copies it to the new official Spanish 1 course. It proves very popular there. So should user2 get a badge? Especially if user1 does not. Memrise could check if the mem is a copy of another, from a different course. But this is getting quite complicated now.
Yeah, the only other thing I could think of was competitions. However, that requires organisation, not just a software change. But you could have best Spanish mem for Englsh speakers. Best overall mem. Etc etc. And organise it through the forums. Users could nominate their favourite mems. (Though again, ownership could be an issue) After voting,staff would then have to manually hand out the badges. Perhaps do yearly.
(It must be possible to hand out custom badges - somehow - as I have seen some around)
(Perhaps restrict voting to a certain trust level - or only count votes from a minimum trust level … to avoid ballot stuffing).
Edit: If you want an example of a custom badge… see: http://www.memrise.com/user/Kaspian/
“TOP 50 in September Back-to-School Learning Competition”
I’d love to see a badge for overall Memrise use, regardless of course. What I mean is: how many days in a row have you been using Memrise, regardless of which course it’s in? Memrise Pro users have a chart showing their learning history for the last 365 days, and at the bottom, it says something like, “Best Streak: 365 days.” But, there’s no badge or record of consistent use beyond that. Perhaps a badge for 90 or 180 days, and then a new badge every 30 days after that… That would give people who choose shorter courses something to look forward to!
I support more badges (though I don’t overly care), but I just hope they won’t introduce badges that support cheating/grinding/farming (call it as you will) more than learning.
For example, one might, at first, think that a badge for a certain number of words learned would be nice. But, that would a) encourage cheaters to “learn” the same words in multiple courses to get the count (not to mention you can auto-learn your own courses, so it wouldn’t even take time), b) discourage people to ignore the words they find easy and no longer need testing on and c) wouldn’t take into account what has been learned once and never watered vs actually functional knowledge. So, that’s a badge I wouldn’t like at all.
