Discourse의 배지와 전반적인 대화성

기여 기능
1

이 게시글은 디스코urses의 배지(Badge) 기능과 시스템이 신규 사용자에게 보이는 일반적인 행동 방식에 대한 근거를 이해하려는 제 시도의 일환입니다.

간단한 배경 설명을 드리자면, 저는 디스코urses 관리자로서 경험이 많은 편은 아닙니다. 현재 제 조직의 커뮤니티를 위해 약 한 달간 단일 인스턴스를 성공적으로 운영하고 있습니다. 시스템을 설정하고 우리 요구사항에 맞게 작동하도록 만드는 데는 학습 곡선이 있었지만, 일단 설정이 끝나면 대부분의 디자인 결정에 매우 만족하고 있습니다.

이로 인해, 저는 디스코urses 인스턴스 관리자로서 짧은 임기 동안, 그리고 여러 독립적인 인스턴스의 장기 사용자로서 겉보기에 모순되는 점을 발견하게 되었습니다.

한편으로는, 디스코urses의 UI는 데스크톱과 모바일 모두에서 미니멀하고 *세련(slick)*되어 있으며, 진정한 UI 디자인의 교과서라 할 수 있습니다.

다른 한편으로는, 시스템이 놀라울 정도로 말이 많고, 새로운 가입자가 생기고 나서 꽤 오랫동안 제 주의를 요구하고 있습니다. 끝없는 배지, 첫 좋아요에 대한 감사 알림, 첫 게시물 알림, 그리고 만약 제가 첫 아들을 낳는다면 그에게도 기대되는 알림들까지 말입니다. 디스코urses의 초기 단계에서 이 뒤에 심각한 의도가 있었을 것이라고 가정해 봅니다. 당시 대부분의 포럼 소프트웨어와 매우 달랐던 *야수(beast)*였기 때문입니다. 그리고 아마도 완전한 초보자들이 어떻게 잘 사용하고 어떻게 잘 행동해야 하는지 교육하는 방법을 고안해야 했을 것입니다.

현재로 돌아가 보겠습니다: 이제 디스코urses는 거의 모든 커뮤니티가 선호하는 사실상 표준이 되었습니다. 그리고 연동(federated)된 계정 시스템이 없기 때문에 각 커뮤니티에 별도로 가입해야 합니다. 그리고 각 커뮤니티에서 새 배지로 맞이합니다. 그리고 또 다른 배지. 그리고 UI 팁. 그리고 항상 (1)이 표시되는 이 작은 읽지 않은 알림 카운터, 항상 시스템이 제게 주는 어떤 배지나 유용한 팁에 대한 것입니다.

설정(Settings)의 ‘인터페이스(Interface)’ 섹션에 있는 ‘신규 사용자 온보딩 팁 및 배지 건너뛰기’ 설정이 어느 정도 도움이 되지만, 활성화한 후에도 여전히 몇몇 새로운 주의 끌기 알림을 볼 수 있습니다.

아마도, 이제 디스코urses 소프트웨어에 익숙하지 않은 사람이 훨씬 줄어들었으니, 이 전체 기능의 기본값에 대해 다른 방향으로 움직일 때가 된 것이 아닐까요? 저는 우리 삶에 충분한 분산(distraction) 요소가 있지 않나요?

14개의 좋아요
2021: The Year in Review
Disable all badge notifications as a user
General feedback on Dev team priorities
Skip *old* user onboarding tips and badges, also
2

The badges and the chattiness is there to increase engagement among new users. The idea is for them to feel welcomed and appreciated for their actions in your community.

However, badges is something that could be disabled in site settings in case you don’t find them useful in your community.

5개의 좋아요
3

I bet I’m not the only one that feels annoyed and not welcome or appreciated. Let me give you an example: in pre-COVID era we all went to an offline store at some point of our lives. Sometimes there is a sales person that will greet you and try to be helpful, but me personally – I hated it with passion. Just let me browse the store, I know what I need if I don’t I will ask! But the store probably has monetary reason behind this behavior — having sales staff harass customers this way drives sales up by a measurable degree.

My question is did someone at Discourse perform any survey on whether this behavior was/is needed?

If your answer is ‘this is common sense’ let me counter with that 10-15 years ago common sense was to allow half of screen estate to be used by user signatures containing animated GIFs strong enough to induce epilepsy fit.

Btw, I’m aware of the fact that badges system can be turned off. I did that at our managed instance. The problem is that I don’t have control over the defaults of any future instances I will sign up for, for some of which I have to sign up for.

3개의 좋아요
4

I don’t know if this is the correct setting but isn’t that already a thing ?

image

Found at discourse.example.com/my/preferences/interface

2개의 좋아요
5

Yes and no. It does indeed remove some of the badges, tips and notifications, but it doesn’t turn off badges for your account completely (AFAIK it’s not possible under current architecture).

For example I still earn ‘Basic’ and ‘Editor’ everywhere I go.

3개의 좋아요
6

Carrying on with Your example, even if I hate it, I can not govern the store policy on employee behaviour for a store that I do not own.

Hence, I believe it makes perfect sense to let the store management decide what drives their sales the most.

The same could be applied to forums. If such encouragement drives engagement on a forum, there is no harm to it. If you’d rather not like it, maybe write a feedback to the store (forum) manager but theres only so much that could be done here.

Just to be clear, I’m not trying to advocate for the behaviour, I too believe the noise needs to be toned down a bit and such notifications be customizable to a do not disturb kind of low priority queue. However, I don’t see a harm with some encouragement coming my way if I am a newcomer.

However, that being said, once I’ve received the same set of badges and promotions on over three dozen forums, it feels very odd and redundant.

2개의 좋아요
7

Allow me to emphasize that in my example store’s decision to implement this policy is a conscious one. They weighed pros and cons and decided to actively push sales this way.

My subjective impression of multiple Discourse communities I saw is that they simply leave defaults as is or don’t know that setting disabling this exists.

3개의 좋아요
8

That’s very strange, it is fairly straightforward for an admin to locate the setting to disable badges.

And personally, I haven’t heard a similar complaint in my last 5 years of using discourse.

But I think this should be turned into an Opt-in setting during first setup wizard so admins could decide whether they want badges or not.

1개의 좋아요
9

I’ve just went though the experience of fresh install a month ago and can tell you that there is some degree of customization fatigue there. You initially focus on how the instance should look like, what policy texts should reflect and so on. It can easily slip through the cracks and, you’re right, generally no one will complain about it. Cause it’s easy to dismiss meaningless notification 10 times.

I agree on opt-in part. At least it turns this into conscious decision reflecting admin’s view.

5개의 좋아요
10

Maybe I’ve remembered wrongly, but when you sign up to a Discourse forum isn’t there an option to ignore this stuff? And I’m sure not many people engage with Discobot.

With badges, maybe it could just become part of that - and/or maybe a setting available in preferences/notifications.

11

There is a per user setting to disable new user onboarding on a per-user basis and there is an admin setting to enable (default ON) badges globally. My understanding is that @max_gashkov is interested in the rational for the latter and wants it to be omitted as a default OFF.

1개의 좋아요
12

Yes that or the ability as a user to turn off badges/badge notifications.

2개의 좋아요
13

In some ways, this forum is used to survey user’s reactions to Discourse. As an example, have a look at the discussion that initiated the “skip new user onboarding” feature: Let experienced users skip "new to Discourse" features.

For some details about the thinking behind this approach, have a look at the blog post that’s linked in the response to How does the Discourse team do usability testing?.

6개의 좋아요
14

Thanks, Simon. I do like the concept of Complaint Driven Development, so I will complain some more!

I’m not sure that the ‘Skip…’ feature is working as intended then. On each and every forum I sign up on, after I check this option, I’m still notified about ‘Welcome’, ‘Editor’ badges and several others.

May I offer another way to address this? Slack did many things wrong, but some right: it differentiates unread counter in dock on desktop for direct messages and all others, displaying digit or dot on the app icon. Is it possible to do the same in the Discourse UI? Digit for all user-initiated events (replies to topics, mentions, user-to-user messages etc.) and dot for all automatic activity (badges and I’m not sure what else).

8개의 좋아요
15

This seems like an oversight on our part, we will certainly get these suppressed with the setting.

11개의 좋아요
18

It was happening because of a bug. It’s fixed here:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/12819

8개의 좋아요
19

Nice one .. good catch.

Catching Major League Baseball GIF by MLB

3개의 좋아요
Animated gifs: Make it stop!
20

This is great! I am glad people are able to opt out of these badge notifications… I also get them on sites I join and have become inured to them. Good catch complaining about this and also good catch getting this bug fixed. Thanks @andrei! :hugs:

On Discourse for Teams, we have disabled badges entirely because there is no need for such incentivizing on a private site for team collaboration amongst people who are already be motivated to work together!

What happens on sites with discobot disabled? Is there no way for users to opt out except by going to their user prefs?

Actually, I think this is about discouraging shoplifting!

5개의 좋아요
Allow skipping beginner tips when discobot disabled
21

I’d just like to chip in to say that I find the badges and general system chattiness on Discourse sites pretty naff.

I suspect that many admins simply don’t bother, or don’t know how to turn it all off. I guess very few users bother to complain about it - its just a low level irritation that reduces one impression of the organisation running the site, so the overall effect may be negative but is never measured.

It would make more sense to me if all this stuff was OFF by default and it required the creator of the site to make a conscious effort to turn it on.

For me all the badges and encouragement are at best patronising and at worst insulting and always a distraction. The system is treating users like primary school kids (which is ok if that is what they are).

22

Overall there are more people on the internet that are at the primary school level of computer competency than advanced users.

Badges are definitely a love it or hate it type of feature… some sites have users that get a little competitive about completeness, and others as evidenced here, aren’t a fan! Maybe that’s a good indication that they should be an option in the site setup wizard?

Though, it’s certainly possible that improving the “i’m not a beginner” opt-out at account creation could cover most of the complaints here.

13개의 좋아요