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:


And I don't see how this formatting is irksome

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

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 misses the text info that used to be displayed for each user?