It will be nice people’s profiles to have badges (or patches), like the image below which Project Noah has.
Why?
Because in that way many people try to earn as many badges can and that is also a way to show to them that their work is appreciated and recognized.
We have badges - I have hopped from Reader to Enthusiast.
I’m new here (user since may’19) and i agree with you @ctaklis, in my opinion it would improve the site and would increase the observations and the identifications
Can’t help but note that project Noah already tried it and Inaturalist didn’t and Inaturalist has been a lot more successful. I don’t want us to be more like them.
I don’t like the idea of competitiveness between participants.
I see badget as a competition
One other point to note is just how horrible many identifications are on Project Noah, especially insects. Just gamifying quantity without some check for quality tends to yield significantly more bad IDs. That sort of system would get a lot of push-back.
However, there has been some talk about a reputation system that may have some similar components but would also be a quality check by nature. My own thought would be to see if this meets the desire well enough and then see if there are ways it could be improved.
Definitely “like” the new profile pic :)
I have to admit, I enjoyed the badge hunt in the forum, but I don’t think it has a plac on iNat proper… Personally speaking of course!
Tricky to do that right, gaming the system for vanity numbers (= badges) is not a happy or meaningful choice.
Gamifiying iNaturalist has been suggested many times over the years, and aside from some small concessions (eg leaderboards) it’s something iNaturalist has resisted and I think that is for the best. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think iNat’s strength is that the people who use it are motivated internally and really want to help others and create strong data.
Personally I dislike adding game elements to a pursuit - enjoying nature and helping others with IDs - that should be enjoyable (or at least internally compelling for us compulsive types) in and of itself, so I would be strongly against any sort of additional badges or incentives here. I’m not against them in principle - I love getting them when playing video games, for example - but I don’t think they will improve iNaturalist. If you want to earn badges for finding organisms, Seek by iNaturalist is a good alternative.
Those badges are related to the forum and come from Discourse, not iNaturalist.
I’m going to close this request as we won’t be adding gamification elements to iNat.
