What's with all these ridiculous new "badges"?

[hill-walker]

Is it just me, or are others insulted by the infantilisation of this board, and being awarded badges, for "being helpful", or whatever?

I'm a grown up, not a child. I don't need badges so others can see how helpful I am.

My 3 year old granddaughter get awarded badges at nursery school, for acheiving things like washing her hands, brushing her teeth, being nice to her little sister etc., and quite honestly, it feels like I'm seen by ebay, as having about the same mental age as her!

We're all adults here; I just wish eBay would treat us as such.

[hill-walker]

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@the_book_seekers wrote:

I think what shows the state of these boards are the numbers of users that are signed in at any one time. At the moment there are about 600

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Where do you see that figure please?

[the_book_seekers]

It's something that's been added to the community boards home page - right hand side about a third of the way down. 

[hill-walker]

So it is! Thank you - I'd never seen that before 🙂

[Anonymous]

I wonder how that compares relatively to the wild West day's of Q&A?

[hill-walker]

I couldn't quote figures, but I've be on and around the forum since 2001, and it certainly "feels" about the same now, as it did in the early days, re number of participants. 

[the_book_seekers]

The revamp of the discussion boards had an effect. The powerseller board used to be quite busy and interesting, but since ebay hid it away under groups > ebay topics > experienced sellers it has dwindled to nearly nothing.

[1956glyn]

I am not sure about that.   A few years ago questions were being posted every couple of minutes and at times it was hard to keep up.    On the other hand maybe it just seems a lot quieter to me since they split the boards up into different sections.

[switch-it-on]

Fair enough. Perhaps it is the others who consider you part of their clique. 

Or perhaps it's a figment of your imagination. 

[vikkipollardanddafyddthomas]

If the aim of introducing these "badges" is indeed for the "growth of the UK Community by showing new users what they can do on the community and encouraging them to get involved and keep going"  then may I make a suggestion ?  

I use these forums most days and I wouldn't be able to keep count of the number of times I see a newcomer post a question on these forums to be met with instant sarcasm, overcomplicated suggestions or completely unhelpful advice such as "Try google" or "Ebay are BLEEP. Sell elsewhere".  This clearly doesn't encourage new users to contribute. If I hadn't used these forums before and searched for my issue and saw threads going off topic within an hour and ending up with several pages with the same few members having a personal discussion, all trying to outdo each other by being "clever" or "funny" or just confrontational , I wouldn't bother looking for advice and would try elsewhere. I appreciate this describes almost every online forum but it does have a detrimental effect.  

If you created a thread, came back later on in the day and saw you had 32 replies of which 30 were totally unhelpful and consisted of 2 or 3 individuals chattering away to each other, would you be encouraged to continue posting ?

There is some great advice given on here , not just from community experts and mentors but other users too, however the advice too often gets lost in a sea of unhelpful, pointless comments made for the sake of it, just so certain members can have the last word in a discussion that went completely off-topic 50 posts earlier.   This helps nobody and definitely doesn't encourage new users to get involved and keep going.

In my opinion offering virtual badges for creating more posts and replies simply encourages the same members (the ones who turn threads into their own conversations) to post more to raise their kudos and raise the number of badges. It will just make them worse. Rewarding people for posting more isn't the way to improve the forums. It just puts quantity over quality. 

[hill-walker]

Whilst I understand what you're saying, and more or less agree, I think the root cause of this is the way the boards are organised.

For serious answers to queries, without all the problems you outline, help should probably be sought on the Member-to-Member board, where only mentors are allowed to reply. Generally speaking, those problems are not seen there. 

The more general Discussion board is just that - for more general discussion, warts and all.

Quite how you get "serious" questions to be asked on the M2M board though, rather than the Discussion board, I have no solution, but I don't think badges will help, either. 

[simas-stuff]

Oh did you get a badge for printing off your badges? Asking for a friend.

[simas-stuff]

Exactly. It appears they are ignoring any condemnation of the new listing tool because obviously in ebays eyes it is fantastic!

[hettsville]

If I'm getting a badge I want a real one so I can sell it on eBay.

[plpmr]

Don't forget the badge for when a member gets 100 badges.

[elitegiftsltd]

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@the_book_seekers wrote:

It's something that's been added to the community boards home page - right hand side about a third of the way down. 

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Is it as accurate as the method of counting views prior to the recent change or the method afterwards? 

Or simply what someone imagines the number of people looking at the page is ..... 🙂

[elitegiftsltd]

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@switch-it-on wrote:

Fair enough. Perhaps it is the others who consider you part of their clique. 

Or perhaps it's a figment of your imagination. 

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Unlike some I don't have that kind of imagination. 

[elitegiftsltd]

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@simas-stuff wrote:

Exactly. It appears they are ignoring any condemnation of the new listing tool because obviously in ebays eyes it is fantastic!

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To a committee of non users sat round a table it is fantastic. To users ..... it is that which encourages growth. 

My dad used to stick some round the rhubarb, freely available from the local zoo as a result of feeding the elephants. 

[pixiesen2012]

you got it the wrong way round they get a badge if they create a new glitch!

[pixiesen2012]

I've been away on a school trip and came back to a raft of these ridiculous things

I now have 24 badges!

I really don't see how giving someone a 'virtual' badge is going to encourage them to post more problems for people to solve or spend time finding out how to solve someone elses problem

you either have a problem or you don't

and those who want to answer queries already do so.

[ukhaberdashery]

Basically EBAY are COPYING what ETSY did several months ago. It did nothing to improve anything. And most sellers and youtubers just laughted at all the stupid badges.

If ebay wanted to encourgae us they should be the ones answering message left on the boards on a hourly basis rather than next to never. When we have questions we would like to hear answers from the horses mouth rather that somone who maybe leading others in teh wrong direction. Seems they want a "community" that they take very little part in.

I must admit though ebays stock answers seem to be "We are monitering the situation" which actually means they are doing nothing to most questions or problems.