I read (and replied to) it... Guess the :) that I intended didn't come through.

For those using desktop version on iPhone, the Badges are at bottom left of MyFlyertalk.

photo. Hth.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c08706216.jpeg

Ibjoel has already said that 100 countries badge *is* coming (which is the point I came to this thread to make but has now been asked many times and replied to three times)
I think it is necessary as I can honestly claim 50 countries, but I am just a fairly lightweight holiday traveller. Many of the great and good here are well north of 100 and it doesn't seem right that I have the same badge. It does seem to get exponentially harder to tick places off the list once you start getting above 125, so I can see a point to having those higher badges, but you have to remember what they are for. They are not there for a competition to show off for the top people, they are there to make people feel good about what *they* have achieved so they engage with the site more and generate additional advertising revenue. So there needs to be a large cohort with the top badges. I presume this is also why the other badges are as they are. They are there because it's what the advertisers think is useful for their demographic and for them.
A lot of people never leave their own country which will skew the global travel statistics and some geographies make totting up the early badges almost trivial. So 10 countries might seem like a lot to someone in Kansas, but someone from The Netherlands would probably wonder why you didn't get out more. But as pointed out, here on FT there are probably enough with 100+ to make it a useful badge.
On the flip side, x million milers seems to be mostly a US thing. Because non-US airlines tend not to give rewards based on total mileage I don't think people elsewhere count it as often.

What about some other badges? For example Lounges visited/IDB's/Op Upgrades/Lounges barred from - must be lots of other ideas for this. Also I need the 100 countries badge.

I can still remember when Trip Advisor brought in badges. A lot of the main contributors left shortly afterwards. But as was pointed out, those people weren't the ones bringing in the revenue to the site, so they didn't really care, the badges were to engage those masses not the main contributors.
But you will have noticed that the site stopped being useful shortly afterwards as well, I certainly stopped trusting any of its content. Let's hope the same thing doesn't happen here.

I did which is why I replied to it.

Earning badges is something cub scouts do.

This Is a very good website & I get some people like annoying colourful things to look at but at least find a way for the grown ups to not have to.

Please.

I seem to have defaulted to 40 countries visited. Was this populated from somewhere or just a random setting?

Click the link below (if logged in) and select what you want:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/badges.ph cu p?do=viewbadges

Some FlyerTalkers are displaying 10, 20, 30 & 40 countries visited.

Once the 100 countries badge is available, perhaps that series of badges should be reprogrammed so that only the highest selected is displayed?

I know IBJoel has put a lot of thought into this, and I hope people will realise that it's simply impossible for us to put something together that reflects everyone's circumstances. The Continent of Europe has a very different travel profile from that of North America, for example, so accomplishments may vary.

So whilst a US-based road warrior might stay in hotels for 100 nights a year, they may well only visit a couple of countries on business plus perhaps another one for vacation. A Europe-based businessman, on the other hand, might well have a lower number of nights but a much larger number of countries. European and Asian airlines also don't measure Air Miles travelled in the same way as US ones do, so the reality is that unless you keep meticulous records of every flight you've ever taken then you're not going to know how much distance you've covered - so essentially, at least in my case, I'm making a best-guess estimate.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter if you claim 40 countries or 50. 10 hotel nights or 90. 500k miles or 2m. All the badges are doing is giving a steer towards members whose answers to a newbie might be considered more useful for the topic in hand. Would you take advice from the US road warrior who's only visited 10 countries if it's a question about Germany, or would you put more weight on the European guy? If you've got a question about Hilton, would you rather rely on the European guy who might at best have a low-level status in HiltonHonors, or the US guy who's a Diamond and knows the ins-and-outs of the program?

Ultimately, too, the mysteries that are Google Analytics seem to reward sites where there is known expertise with higher search rankings. We all know that FT has a lot of expertise in a lot of areas. Many of us have helped our fellow travellers over the years. Up to now, without breaching a lot of personal privacy by creating individual profiles of those we might consider "expert", we haven't had a way to show that. This is a logical step, and one which I think a lot of particularly newbies to us will find useful.

Will these badges evolve? Yes, of course, and the feedback here is important as we tweak things. But please don't try and shoot down what's been done, because overall this is a positive move to build the site's reputation for excellence.

My final reply is that this is simply an incredibly outdated point of view :)

This seems like an irregularity. Only the time on site was supposed to auto-populate

I'll double check, but I believe the logic to make this happen may not exist while allowing a personal pick of which badge you've earned (versus the time on site which is auto-assigned and automatically replaces the "younger" badges)

I wasn't able to select more than one badge from any section, so this may have been fixed. I got a prompt that I was replacing one badge with another that I had to confirm.

EDIT: there is a reason why I wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the testing teams. I only got this prompt because I'd hit my maximum of four badges. If I reduce the number to three I can still select more than one badge in a given category.

As I use FT for the majority of time on my mobile, the badges really take up a lot of space that detracts from content.

I’ve never spoke up about any UX/UI on FT in my nearly 10 years and there’s been some great improvements but this badge addition should at least be optional. It’s pretty poor in my opinion! The left margin on forums listing threads is very irksome! Padding should be even! The new wiki icons are a bit overkill too on thread titles that require two lines.

You're using the site on your mobile, but are you using mobile skin? I don't see how these take up much space:
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...7dbfcf6702.jpg

And I don't see how this formatting is irksome
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...3c28f17612.jpg

There's a long term cohort here of 300+ nights per year, every year, of actual nights in hotel beds. Some don't like to talk about it though, for fear of judgement from those who think it's insane... ;)

I'd also like to be able to turn off the badges, or at least hide the blanks.

Thanks for all the hard work nevertheless, always appreciated :)

But many of those nights are paid. Not all are free.

Oh I missed that, the badges are only for showing off free nights :D

All badges are showing as "locked" for me. Any idea why?

Yes I use the mobile skin as I’m on mobile.

FT didn’t have that wide left margin, did it? It’s definitely changed or alignment has changed! Why would the padding not be the same as the right side?!

The badge take up a good % of space on a mobile screen! Space that was well utilised by the content that we visit FT for, not to see badges!

Am I the only one wh:o misses the text info that used to be displayed for each user?

You mean, the US guy who is a Diamond by holding the Aspire card to make the 10 annual overseas stays nicer? That would be me these days ;)

I get the idea of the badges showing some level of experience, but I wonder, given the confusion here among regulars who *found* this thread, whether a newbie trying to judge the reliability of an answer based on these badges would really understand what they mean.

If I had my druthers, the system would dynamically evaluate the expertise of a given poster for a particular forum. A very basic score could be based on the number of posts and the length of time participating in a particular forum (say, Hilton). And maybe factor in # likes. A self-declared 100-nighter who spends most of them in Holiday Inn Expresses would not appear as an expert in the Hyatt forum that way.

Just now came across this:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d557d5410.jpeg

Would be good to add the number of countries ... 195 UN total, so maybe, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175, 195+

Wow...ok we are going for the ageist view!

How can it be outdated if it's a day old?

My point is do want you want to do it's your site but don't force everyone down the tiktok experience.

Give posters a choice please.

I've now changed my badges to the maximum of everything.



Seriously...what's the point?

Do you play video games? Do you go on Red dit?

No.

No.

I go on flyertalk to learn about and discuss air travel.

OK, so achievement badges have been popular in online gaming for 15+ years (and for 40 years if you want to count high score boards in arcade games). The average gamer is in their 30s and the average female gamer may even be in their mid-40s.

Likewise, "Flair" has been a staple of the world's largest forum community since as long as I can remember.

So your demeaning of badges as being for "cub scouts" is ageist in and of itself and simply out of touch. These badges in no way interfere with your ability to source information on the site and you're free to carry on doing that.

I'm not demeaning badges. Have them if you want - just don't force them on posters.

They do interfere with the flyertalk experience because you see this nonsense everytime you read a post.

This isn't an online gaming site it's a travel enthusiasts site with many well informed posters helping each other navigate the intricacies of airlines/hotels/loyalty cards etc.

If posters have a need to see or show a badge why not put it in their personal profile instead of on the main site and leave the rest of the community out of it?

I think this is related to something we came across in testing. Badges don't update in some cases unless the site's cron refreshes (once a night). When I was messing around, I inadvertently stripped away my own country badge trying to adjust the settings to restrict the badges to a single displayed badge per category.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e3e5b7707.jpeg

Just to add evidence to my feedback above. Here is a clear example on mobile of how the new (quite pointless) changes interfere with the experience. With the top highlighted area taking up just as much screen estate as the actual content that we want to view, the text by CWS (sorry to use you as an example!)

I’m indifferent to badges! Personally I’m not a fan of making everything online a gamification just to keep up retention rates and attract users. Are we that short minded or have such lack of attention spans we need shiny new things waved in our face?! Rhetorical question!! FT does that through the content, knowledge, wisdom, insights itself. It’s a brilliant place for that without look-at-me badges! Have badges if it’s really been a frequently requested feature but don’t have them on every single post, every single user makes and detract from the main purpose of FT.

How does FT know how many countries I have been to?
I have been to 117 but it shows as 40.
How has it worked this out?
​​​​

Feel the Excellence™️

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...4d436b621.jpeg

I'd hate to see your resume. :D :D :D

One issue on the desktop: Info on the left now has headings in regular type and the actual info in bold. Should probably be the other way around. Bolded type takes up a lot of space.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8fcf6cd9d7.png

These seem like a gimmick and look awful on mobiles. Wasting many lines on the screen. Please allow us to turn them off. Some of us actively avoid badges/likes/shows of status online - thats all the bad parts of todays social media. I have zero interest in having users country count put in my face multiple times as i scroll. hope FT isn't drifting away from quality discussion into mainstream social media trappings of badges, likes, etc. Many forums these days are removing post counts and join dates from main forum threads to streamline and simplify everything to focus on the discussions.

so you can :D
is it even a flex these days to display such carbon footprints proudly? :D

Why have I been assigned a "10 COUNTRIES" icon?

IBJoel are there any plans to update the notice that appears at the top of threads ("Thank you to all who contributed. We are working on a new badge system that will allow users to keep their Hotel Reviewer badges, as well as expand options for users to customize their profile with more achievements like countries visited, FlyerTalk profile age, and more.") and to pin something telling people how to update their badges? Friends started message me as a mod while I was offline and my only suggestion was, "Look for a pinned/sticky post at the top of forums for instructions," which, I now realize, was the wrong answer.

Here is an example of the Wiki icons. On the longer thread titles (not depicted) it does truncate to the extent that the topic is not always clear.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...3b776d9c49.jpg

icons locked. Test message.
As mentioned before - badges unlocked after a test message.