Bring Back The ActiveRain Badges!

Ben Kinney and Bob Stewart have asked for suggestion about improving ActiveRain, and a blog by Anita Clark titled "The ActiveRain Social Roster" on Thursday, reminded be of a suggestion I have made a few time .  My suggestion is we need to Bring Back The ActiveRain Badges! Members reading this blog maybe wondering what the heck I am talking about, but members who have been around for a while will remember the Active Rain Badges we use to have appear along with out picture in the comment section.

When the AR Badges were introduced in early 2009, I did not know how I felt about them.  But soon it became obvious to me the Badges were a great way to quickly identifying certain things about members.  The Badges provided a quick way to identify things such as who had reached major Point milestones, how many featured posts a member had, did they have an outside blog, if they had been to a RainCamp, or were they a Called Shot Maker. Each category had a different Badge, and even different colors within categories.  For some reason the ActiveRain Badges disappeared 2-3 years ago, and it was never explained why.  

For whatever reason the Badges were removed, I think it is time to bring them back.  The Badges were not only an excellent quick way of identifying what a member had accomplished.  The Badges were also an incentive for members to increase their participation in ActiveRain, by striving to earn more of the Badges.

I would not only like to see the Badges returned, I would also like to see the the number of Badges increased.  This is not the first time I have made this request.  I first expressed the need to do so in a blog I wrote on March 5, 2009 titled "ActiveRain Needs One More Badge".

One of the Badges I felt needed to be added back then, and I still do, was a badge to quickly identify the date a member joined ActiveRain.  I joined ActiveRain on September 14, 2006, and the only reason why I knew this was because I wrote a blog shortly after I joined, and each blog is dated.  But for a long time I did not know exactly what day in September it was.  Since then I have discovered where and how to obtain that date, but it would be so much easier if there was a Badge which we could quickly see the date by just scrolling over the Badge.

I know the ActiveRain Staff is busy with several other features more important than this.  But I figured as long as Ben and Bob are asking, and Anita Clark's blog reminded me of this, I will through in my 2 cents worth.  In my opinion this would be the perfect time to bring back the Badges since ActiveRain has brought back the old leadership, lets also bring back some of the old features.

My requests about Badges have gone unanswered in the past, but the way I look at it, if I don't ask, I will not get.  So I am asking Bring Back The ActiveRain Badges!

 

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 Info about the author:

George Souto NMLS# 65149 is a Loan Officer who can assist you with all your FHA, CHFA, and Conventional mortgage needs in Connecticut. George resides in Middlesex County which includes Middletown, Middlefield, Durham, Cromwell, Portland, Higganum, Haddam, East Haddam, Chester, Deep River, and Essex. George can be contacted at (860) 573-1308 or gsouto@mccuemortgage.com