A user on a forum saw the “First Reply by Email” badge and attempted to reply to emails, despite the feature being turned off. They received an error message and raised the issue on the forum. tophee suggested hiding the badge when email replies are disabled to avoid confusion. codinghorror questioned how the user saw the badge if the feature was off, while pfaffman explained that the user saw the badge and wanted to achieve it, but couldn’t due to the disabled feature. pfaffman further clarified that the user was attracted to the unattainable badge. mpalmer jokingly suggested enabling reply-by-email to satisfy the user. tophee emphasized that the point was to report the inconsistency, not to discuss the specific site or user.
We’ve just had some confusion with a user seeing the “First Reply by Email” badge on our forum and concluded that he could reply to the emails he receives from the forum (though we still have it furbed off). When he tried he got an error message and subsequently raised the issue on the forum.
Maybe that badge should not be shown as long as reply by email is off?
How did he get the badge if it is turned off, e.g. how did he manage to reply via email if it is not set up?
I think it’s that they saw the badge and wanted it,so they tried to rely by email to get it.
You shouldn’t be able to succeed in getting the badge unless you succeed in replying via email so the whole situation is very curious to me.
It’s not that he succeeded in getting the badge. It’s that he saw the unattainable badge and really, really wanted it, and was very sad and confused that such an enticing badge was offered to him, but was cruelly offered as a valuable prize and reward that was, in fact, unavailable.
Why not make your user happy and turn on reply-by-email? “Gotta catch 'em all” ain’t just for pokemon.
I’m only mod on that site, not admin, so I can’t do it (sent him instructions though). But the point here is not that site anyway and neither is it a big deal. I just wanted to let you know about this little, lets say, inconsistency 