Let experienced users skip "new to Discourse" features

I’m disappointed whenever a notification turns out to be a badge notification when I’m expecting a reply notification. I would like to be able to turn badge notifications off.

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There is no per-user option here, I am not strictly against this kind of options but we work quite hard to ensure the only badge notifications you get are ones that matter and suppress the majority.

The notification that prompted me to write here was for earning the First Like badge.

That only happens once, don’t worry you will never be notified about that again

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But it happens on every Discourse instance and can get a little bit annoying when I join a new community. More than once I was wishing for a “Don’t notify me about ‘Getting Started’ badges. I know what I’m doing!” checkbox.

Or maybe let the Narrative Bot disable those badges for me by telling him that this is not the first time I’m using Discourse?

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This kind of exists, not sure where to put it in the UI? Like so:

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Is there a way to disable all badges for everyone entirely? I just don’t want to bother my users with badges.

Sorry for asking before researching.
Admin / Settings / Basic setup / Enable the badge system

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I’d also welcome the possibility to turn off badge notifications. For me, what bugs me is the “Nice Share” badge, especially since that badge seems to be rather meaningless after all.

So perhaps my particular quibble coukd skso be addressed by fixing that particular badge, but since different people seem to have different badges they don’t want to be notified about, I also like the idea to

I’ve never been asked by a user to disable the badge notifications, but more than once we’ve discussed the idea of showing badges as a separate indicator over the avatar.

I’ve deleted pretty much all the badges on my site, one by one. My users are professionals, academics, government, health researchers, law enforcement, etc. I’d get an earful from them if badges started popping up. Ditto with Cake Day.

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You didn’t need to delete them, there is a site setting to turn off all badges…

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Clearly I never saw that setting, but it’s good to know. Thanks.

I created an account here, just to beg you to let users turn off the useless time and attention wasting badges.

Those things can be cute for a new person who posts occasionally. The problem is that the more involved you’re in a given discourse community the more the badges are time wasteful, because you get a lot more of them. Here is my notification bar from the last day:

screenshot

This is ridiculous. I want to be notified only when someone needs my help, period.

I don’t want to be notified about anything else.

So at the very least please let’s have ‘Earned whatever’ category of badges configurable by each user.

Another more specific configurable option I would like to request to be able to disable notifications when someone referred to a thread I created. I have a lot of threads/posts, why does the system waste my time notifying me about this? And why can’t I turn it off.

Social networks created a big disease of notification hell, please let’s not perpetuate it everywhere.

Thank you!

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Hi stas00 welcome to the forum

What you may not have noticed is the “Dismiss All”. If you are certain you have no interest in reading the Notifications it is a simple step to clear their unread status.

Thank you for the follow up, @Mittineague. But your proposition is not answering my needs at all.

Perhaps my message wasn’t clear, so let me try to explain again with bullets this time, so there is no space for ambiguity.

I do want notifications when:

  1. my input is needed, someone quoting my username in forums or pm
  2. a new follow up is posted in a thread I’m involved in
  3. a new follow up is posted in a thread I am interested in, but not participating directly

I don’t want any other notifications, in particular:

  1. the gamification-type of notifications.
  2. notified about someone linking to a thread I started, now I think twice before I start a new thread because of that “feature”. I happen to start popular threads and boy, those someone mentioned your thread notifications are a burden.

I hope it makes sense.

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Are you sure you’re referring to Discourse? There is no concept of a “thread” in Discourse. I don’t want there to be any ambiguity, so it’s clear what we are talking about.

I would like to request is to be able to disable notifications about when someone referred to a thread I created

Are you sure you’re referring to Discourse? There is no concept of a “thread” in Discourse. I don’t want there to be any ambiguity, so it’s clear what we are talking about.

100% sure. Here is how it looks in the notification (private info in the center of it removed)

screenshot_1

If I click on that notification, the post it sends me to typically says something along the lines:

refer to this [thread] ( link to a thread I started ) for blah blah

And I’m not signed up to watch notifications for that thread that the notification sent me to.

Discourse doesn’t have threads, only topics.

I stand corrected, @Stephen. Here is an updated list using the correct nomenclature:

I do want notifications when:

  1. my input is needed, someone quoting my username in forums or pm
  2. a new follow up is posted in a topic I’m involved in
  3. a new follow up is posted in a topic I am interested in, but not participating directly

I don’t want any other notifications, in particular:

  1. the gamification-type of notifications.
  2. notified about someone linking to a topic I started
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I want to add Discourse’s badges “for me” are a net negative in my life. I need less distractions not more and my user icon even showing a little number that there are new notifications is yet another distraction saying “hey! look over here! look over here!”.

In 2019 there are really too many distractions in my life. Near every feature in an app that is actively trying to distract me is a net negative in my life.

I’m not saying the feature is bad, some people enjoy the badge notifications, but for me I’d really like to be able to turn them off 100% as a user. Please consider let users turn off all badge notifications. Help up take are lives back from all the app features asking for our attention.