What would be the point in adding an entirely new system that is only nominally different when you could simply restructure a pre-existing system (emblems) and enforce stricter rules for what qualifies and how often they're distributed? It seems to be more of a debate of semantics at this point.
I'd also like to suggest that maybe certain emblems could be displayed on the postbit, while others are profile exclusive; this is a mediated solution that would allow for ego emblems and the more frivolous or silly emblems to remain while also allowing users to display their "earned" emblems (the proposed badges), too. I imagine that would be far easier to implement, too, and would only mean a slight restructuring from what is already in place.
It depends on the precise details of your general proposal.
Since the visual nature of the incentive is central to my proposal, I certainly like the sound of a postbit, but the underlying issues that emblems have as an incentive (as opposed to, say, a whimsical triviality) would need to be addressed. The rank/reward distinction that wolf made earlier is very important to this, since I think the the way to address emblems not acting as an incentive would be to make postbit emblems
exclusively for ranks and profiles emblems for everything else. While I haven't researched the emblem master list, I'm guessing that almost none of them would actually make for good "badges," and as a result, we would need to come up with a set of postbit emblems that are supposed to matter. I'm fine with this, but I want to be clear that just putting some of the currently existing emblems in a postbit and calling it an incentive would not cut it. I was under the impression though, with something "being in the works" and all, that emblems were getting replaced anyway?
Emblems would also need to be rebranded, with the distinction between "trivial" and "serious" emblems being very explicitly stated and marketed. This is, I think, what Yoshikko and Derk are expressing some skepticism about. In principle, I am not against rebranding emblems or supplementing them within the existing system, but that does run a very real risk of devaluing the newly created incentive because emblems have no prestige. I don't know anything about code or anything else logistically relevant to the implementation of my proposal, so sorry if this is naive, but if it's so easy to add a postbit to emblems, I guess I don't see why it would be difficult to just have a postbit incentive that existed in its own right? This is why, while I am not really opposed to what you're proposing, I think a separate system makes more sense, though it might be resting on an erroneous assumption.
More broadly, I pretty much agree with everything Nah said:
Oh yeah, btw, I don't really care if we have one system or two or if we call 'em badges or emblems or salt&pepper shakers, I just want some sort of visible recognition of members' contributions to a section/the forum (and I think that's basically what Anti's looking for here too).
It is
exactly what I am looking for. I must confess that I do not care about the fate of emblems (see my previous reply in this thread) or what exactly the details of it are so long as it happens and it fills a void that has existing in the battling community for far too long. I hope that, if we made an effort to maintain the (apparently popular) emblems system, that the meat and potatoes of what I am proposing--a
visual incentive that
explicitly recognizes
contribution and contribution alone--will not be lost in the shuffle.
