When we first started using user titles we said we’d review the situation before expanding them, well, that review is up!
Originally we added user titles where we thought it would be useful for members or readers of the forum to have some background info about the user. So we covered:
Creators and core team members of Elixir, Phoenix, Nerves and Erlang.
Authors of Elixir or Erlang books published by a professional publisher such as PragProg, Manning, O’Reilly.
Creators or core team members of libraries or tools that are frequently posted about on the forum or where they impact a large number of users (such as deployment tools and language servers).
Now that we can add badges to avatars (the little logos that appear for the core teams of Elixir, Phoenix, Nerves and Erlang) we can more easily expand the use of these user titles - so, here’s what we’re proposing to extend them to:
Creators or core team members of any library or tool that is in the top 300 downloaded packages on Hex or has over 100 stars on Github - and where there are at least 50 threads about it.
Creators or core team members of any library or tool for which we have a dedicated section here on the forum.
What do you think, does this sound fair? Useful?
In the meantime, if anyone meets the above criteria and would like your title added, please PM me to let me know - subject to there being no major objections about the plan, we’ll proceed to add them soon
With regards to everyone else, and for a way to easily reflect a user’s experience and knowledge, we will be expanding our user profile system too… but we’ll detail that in a separate thread.
Ego and status are the currency of FOSS (and I mean that in the best way possible, FOSS contributors deserve to be proud of their creations!) - I say we give all those folks working hard to give us awesome tools as much recognition as we can. They deserve at least that much imho
Seeing at a glance that someone responding on a thread about a specific library is the library author or core team member is helpful. Seeing their badge on other threads that are out of their area of expertise is visual noise.
What I would find useful is a way to “follow” some users. For example, I’d like to read anything Joe Armstrong has to say on any thread even if I’ve previously muted the thread. This would put the power in each user of the forum to decide who to pay more attention to, rather than trying to globally say someone is worth listening to on the basis of a popular library.
Yep, it’s all about balance (that’s why there are still some limits and why we don’t allow people to write whatever they want as a title) - they have to be useful and add something of value
I think it could be useful in other threads too as they could be related. So for example say the author of an authentication library speaking in a discussion or question about authentication. Same with authors of deployment libraries, etc.
A great way to do this at the moment is (apart from going on their profile and seeing their activity) to look at the group page, if that member is part of a group. In Joe’s case, he’s part of the Erlang Core Team Group (similar groups also exist for the Elixir, Phoenix and Nerves core teams)
Do you mean the new badges that show with the avatars of core team members of Elixir/Phoenix/Nerves/Erlang? We have no plans to remove them
Yes… but we can always increase that number later It’s all about trying to get the balance right. Some people may want none or as few as possible, others will want the complete opposite so it’s about meeting in the middle somewhere.
I think we can could Gitlab too (do they have stars? I can’t remember )
@AstonJ I’m reading your message as compiler asking about edge-cases which you simply did not described well. It’s probably why you did not get it correctly.
Nope I mean that some library could be in this month in top 300 (it could be on 300 or less position), but not in next month (it would be then on 301 or higher position), so when order changes you need to remove badge.
You got it wrong. I mean that 200, 300 or 400 is not fully true value, because in those list are libraries which applies to other rule I quoted. With that we have x libraries from one rule and 300-x libraries from 2nd rule, because of duplicates.
Yes, they have! Just want to mention that Github is not only one big code hosting service. I mentioned GitLab, because it allows to create unlimited number of private repositories for no costs. I think that most important are:
BitBucket
Github
GitLab
I know about them, because I worked in all of them in my Elixir jobs.
I limited my comment specifically about threads that are not related. I recognize that there are threads that would be relevant to their expertise too. And we can’t really algorithmically distinguish them.
I suspected there was a way to “look up” a specific user’s posts, but it’s more of an activity than a passive “follow”. I don’t see myself using the “look up” feature on any consistent basis. I recognize we’re limited to Discourse features and I further recognize my lack of knowledge about them.
so it’s about meeting in the middle somewhere.
