So, one of the things I asked for in my post on some of the tweaks to the forums, was for ideas to renamed the Trust Level badges. Well, now I’m making a poll to see what people think about them. (I picked out the best four, with I think one tweak to one of them.)
New > Basic > Member > Regular > Leader
Tale Seeker > Tale Reader > Tale Singer > Talesmith > Fatewriter
Flash Fiction > Short Story > Novelette > Novel > Epic
It’s in last place on the polls, which is good, but the one that could name us after story length might confuse new members. They might thing it is a badge people have for writing a story that length. I will say it is the coolest sounding one though.
My biggest concern is clarity. These trust levels exist for a purpose, so it’s best to be able to look at them and intuitively have an idea what they mean.
The default levels are at least descriptive… but even they aren’t perfect. When I first joined, I was a bit confused by what “regular” meant, since it suggested to me someone who is regular, i.e. normal, rather than what it really means, which is someone who is a regular forum-goer… who visits regularly.
It’s still, however, quite a bit clearer than the other three. I could at least see that “mentor” and “elder” are upper levels… guide types, with privileges… but “wanderer/traveller/adventurer” don’t suggest as clear levels to me. I wouldn’t intuitively know what they’re supposed to indicate. The “flash fiction…epic” one at least are in a clear order, albeit harder to link with what they mean in terms of users. The tale ones, though, I really would have trouble getting what they’d mean.
Just… imagine that you’re being presented with these without seeing them side-by-side, without seeing them in a list, without seeing them ranked in order and not already knowing what the levels indicate. Would you understand them, or would you need more explanation than you currently do?
I mean, I’m also going to remake a thread on Trust Levels on the forum, and link the badges to that, rather than the Discourse meta one, so it will also be easier and more intuitive to link to and/or search.
Voted for existing ones, as new levels related to reading or something would be nice I guess, but agree about the misleading point…I have no imagination though sorry …Though I did picture levels suggesting a basic user as someone who reads for fun, and a leader as an old wizard looking person for who reading is their life…but I just have that mental image .
Just wondering, how would people feel about a splice like the following: “new > basic > member > mentor > elder”? I feel like that keeps the clearest of the original Discourse levels—applying to the users who are the least likely to be familiar with the trust system anyway—but provides the flavor of “mentor” and “elder,” which are also the least ambiguous parts of that suggestion. Plus, “mentor” and “elder” give kind of a friendlier vibe than “regular” and “leader” anyway.
(but AFAIK, no way to see exact numbers.)
