We’ve rolled out several new community-building features recently. Everything we’ve implemented has been a direct result of the transition to Vanilla Forums and the resultant ability to implement cool new features relatively easily.
A few months ago we rolled out Icrontic Badges. Badges are a way to show off your “Icronticness” in your user profile. The more you participate in the community, the more rewarding it is for you and for the rest of the community. Badges are a great way to give community members a “roadmap” of how to best participate in this community. If there’s a badge for something, chances are you’re going to find it a rewarding experience to earn it. Playing a game with other Icrontians, meeting new people, sharing your favorite band, having a beer with old friends… what’s not to love? You can see a full list of all the badges to plot your ascension to Icrontic fame.
After badges, we implemented the “Community Scoreboard”. It’s a fun way to see how you stack up against your fellow Icrontians on a month-to-month basis. When we put the scoreboard in, people started scrambling to earn badges so they could one-up their friends. “I can’t possibly let Cannonfodder be higher than me on the scoreboard. SCOREBOARD.”
Next, we began revamping the badge artwork to match our brand. We color coded them orange for gaming, silver for event participation, blue for technical achievements, purple for hobbies, and gold for community contributions. We’re not done yet (there are a lot of badges to cover), but they look far better on a user profile and the bright and recognizable artwork encourages people to get involved. After all, the shiny is important!
Finally, for months and months, people have been asking time and time again for a way to “Like” or “+1” posts. I’m proud to announce that today is your day, friends.
Today we’ve turned on Reactions. Reactions give you the ability to reward community members who contribute positive content with an “Awesome” or a “LOL” on their post. Each upvote adds a point to the user’s score total. Karma or Rep systems have always been an important factor in online forums—if a member has a massive amount of positive reputation, you can generally expect that the words coming out of their keyboard are, at the very least, trustworthy.
You access reactions in the bottom-right corner of any post:
You can “awesome” a post if you feel that it deserves it. If a post makes you literally laugh out loud or spit coffee on your screen, give ’em a “LOL”. If the post is a major derailment, click that ol’ Off Topic button.
We hope that you enjoy the new Reactions system. Get badges, make great posts, and thrash your friends on the scoreboard!
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