Understanding and using badges

[Discourse]

This guide explains what badges are in Discourse, how they work, and how to use them effectively.

Required user level: All users

Badges in Discourse are a key feature that reinforces positive user behavior and facilitates “learning by doing”. They are an integral part of Discourse’s gamification features, designed to encourage and reward user engagement.

Summary

This guide covers:

• What badges are and how they work
• How to receive badges
• Types and groups of badges
• Viewing and managing badges
• Additional resources for administrators

What are badges?

Badges are visual indicators of achievements or milestones that users can earn on a Discourse forum. They serve multiple purposes:

1. Recognizing user contributions
2. Encouraging positive behavior
3. Marking progress in the community
4. Gamifying the forum experience

How to receive badges

There are two primary ways to receive badges in Discourse:

1. Automatically: The system grants badges based on specific actions or achievements.
2. Manually: An administrator manually awards badges to users. Read how to manually assign a badge.

Some badges have optional properties:

• Can be used as a user title
• Can be granted multiple times
• Visible on the public badges page
• Shows the post that granted the badge on the badge page

Types of badges

Discourse badges are classified into three types:

1. Bronze: Easiest to acquire, typically for basic actions
2. Silver: Moderate difficulty, requiring more engagement
3. Gold: Most challenging to obtain, representing significant achievements

Badge groups

By default, badges are organized into the following groups:

• Getting Started
• Community
• Posting
• Trust Level
• Other

If you need to modify the names of the default badge groups, visit discourse.example.com/admin/customize/site_texts?q=js.badges.badge_grouping on your site to customize the text.

Administrators can create custom badge groups and adjust their positions on the badges page.

Viewing badges

To view available badges:

1. Navigate to the /badges page on your Discourse site
2. Browse the list of badges, organized by group
3. Look for the icon, indicating badges you’ve earned
4. Check the counter in the top right corner of each badge to see how many users have earned it

For more details about a specific badge:

1. Click on the badge
2. View information about the badge and users who have earned it

Trust level badges

Some badges correspond to trust levels in Discourse:

• Basic (Trust Level 1)
• Member (Trust Level 2)
• Regular (Trust Level 3)
• Leader (Trust Level 4)

These badges notify users when they’ve attained a new trust level.

Disabling badges

Admins can disable the entire badge system by unchecking the setting enable badges. When disabled, no new badges will be granted, the /badges page will be inaccessible, badge notifications will be hidden, and badges will be removed from user profiles and summaries.

FAQs

Q: Can I suggest new badges for my community?
A: While users can’t create badges directly, you can suggest ideas to your forum administrators, who can create custom badges.

Q: Can I create custom badges for my community?
A: Yes, you can. You can create badges that are manually assigned or ones that are triggered by specified actions.

Q: Are all badges visible to everyone?
A: Most badges are visible on the public badges page, but administrators can choose to hide certain badges.

Q: Can I lose a badge once I’ve earned it?
A: Yes, in some cases. Many badges have auto-revoke enabled by default, which means the system will automatically remove a badge if you no longer meet its criteria. For example, the Regular badge (Trust Level 3) can be lost if your activity drops below the required thresholds. Administrators can also manually revoke badges.

Additional resources

• Granting techniques

  • Grant a custom badge through the API
  • Make requests to the Discourse API with Zapier (see Grant a custom badge section)
  • Award a non-custom badge through the console
  • Grant a badge to individual users manually
  • Bulk Award a badge to a set of users (Bulk award using CSV)
  • Grant a custom badge to all members of a group from the console

• Badge Queries

  • Grant a badge for all members of a group
  • Creating triggered custom badge queries
  • What cool badge queries have you come up with?
  • Some common badge queries

• Miscellaneous

  • What badges, if any, should Discourse have?
  • Initial Discourse badge design spec

Last edited by @hugh 2024-09-03T02:44:27Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-09-03T02:44:33Z

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