Making WordPress.org

Opened 5 years ago

Last modified 9 months ago

#3878 new enhancement

Adding Badges for WordCamp Volunteers and Attendees

Reported by: sebastienserre's profile sebastienserre Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: normal
Component: Profiles Keywords: needs-patch 2nd-opinion
Cc:

Description

Hello,

I just come back from the Nice WordCamp (in Nice France) and realize that 2 badges are missing.

  • Volunteer: Without volunteer,there's no WordCamp, their job is wonderfull and a badge should be automaticclay or manually assigne by the lead organizator.
  • Attendees: because.... the same (without attendees no WordCamp and they're speaking around them about the events and our community so they allow the comunity to growth.

What are you thinking about this?

Change History (25)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #community-events by sippis. View the logs.


5 years ago

#2 follow-up: @crash_47
5 years ago

Oh, yes. I want badges too! 😁

#3 in reply to: ↑ 2 @sebastienserre
5 years ago

Replying to crash_47:

Oh, yes. I want badges too! 😁

Yeah! You can draw them and add them here ;-)

#4 @mukesh27
5 years ago

  • Keywords dev-feedback ui-feedback needs-patch added

Hi @sebastienserre, Welcome to WordPress Meta Trac! Thank you for your ticket.

I like you concept to add 2 new profile budges for WordCamp Volunteer and WordCamp Attendees. let's wait for Dev and Design team response on above thought.

Without Volunteer and Attendees WordCamp is not possible so system needs to give them profile budges so in feature WordCamp we got more application for Volunteer and Attendees. It's good way to enhance WordPress Community.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #design by mukeshpanchal27. View the logs.


5 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by mukeshpanchal27. View the logs.


5 years ago

#7 @Kenshino
5 years ago

Those badges are a recognition to contribution towards WordPress. I'm not sure how that extends towards WordCamp attendees.

#8 @Kenshino
5 years ago

  • Keywords 2nd-opinion added; dev-feedback ui-feedback removed

#9 follow-ups: @hlashbrooke
5 years ago

I can say with a fair amount of certainty that we won't be adding a WordCamp attendee badge at any point - as @Kenshino says, the badges are for contributions to the WordPress project, and attending a WordCamp isn't exactly a contribution.

There is definitely room for a WordCamp Volunteer badge though - the main blocker to making that a possibility is having a realistic and reliable way of tracking who is volunteering at a WordCamp (and actually showing up for the work they have committed to doing. If we can work that out, then we can certainly look at adding a new badge for it.

#10 in reply to: ↑ 9 @mukesh27
5 years ago

@hlashbrooke thank you for your thoughts.

Replying to hlashbrooke:

I can say with a fair amount of certainty that we won't be adding a WordCamp attendee badge at any point - as @Kenshino says, the badges are for contributions to the WordPress project, and attending a WordCamp isn't exactly a contribution.

There is definitely room for a WordCamp Volunteer badge though - the main blocker to making that a possibility is having a realistic and reliable way of tracking who is volunteering at a WordCamp (and actually showing up for the work they have committed to doing. If we can work that out, then we can certainly look at adding a new badge for it.

#11 follow-up: @sebastienserre
5 years ago

Hello all and many thanks for your ansers,
I can understand giving a bagde to attendees seems too much but if we consider things... what is a WordCamp without Attendees ?
They will speak around them on these events and surely send good vibes about community... It's a kind of "evangelisation" and the start of a more effective contribution.

#12 in reply to: ↑ 11 ; follow-up: @hlashbrooke
5 years ago

  • Type changed from defect to enhancement

Replying to sebastienserre:

Hello all and many thanks for your ansers,
I can understand giving a bagde to attendees seems too much but if we consider things... what is a WordCamp without Attendees ?
They will speak around them on these events and surely send good vibes about community... It's a kind of "evangelisation" and the start of a more effective contribution.

I get what you're saying, but by the same logic we can say "What is WordPress without users?" and we would then have to give badges to everyone who has ever downloaded or used WordPress - they use it and could also spread the word about it.

Profile badges are designed to recognise people who make contributions to keeping the WordPress project growing and moving forward, so if we start giving them to everyone then it would dilute their purpose and make them all rather pointless.

#13 in reply to: ↑ 12 @sebastienserre
5 years ago

Replying to hlashbrooke:

I get what you're saying, but by the same logic we can say "What is WordPress without users?" and we would then have to give badges to everyone who has ever downloaded or used WordPress - they use it and could also spread the word about it.

Profile badges are designed to recognise people who make contributions to keeping the WordPress project growing and moving forward, so if we start giving them to everyone then it would dilute their purpose and make them all rather pointless.

I quiet disagree with this. Some users are using WordPress because their company use it, not by choice. In my opinion, this is not contribution using a software but going to an event, speaking about it, working on workshop is (allways IMO) Contribution.

#14 @sippis
5 years ago

I have to agree with @Kenshino and @hlashbrooke. Profile badges are for those who contribute to the WordPress project. As Profile Badges page say:

badges are added based on your contributions to the WordPress project. There are two kinds of badges: contributor and team. The contributor badges are generally assigned to anyone who has contributed to a particular team. Meanwhile, the team badges are given to those who are active on their team.

I do not want to sound uptight, rigorous or give the impression that I don't respect WordCamp attendees or volunteers - as @sebastienserre said, there wouldn't be any WordCamps without attendees or volunteers and WordPress would not succeed without its enthusiast users.

But if we see the scenario through, attendees are just basically coming to a ready-made event and are paying for it (small amount, but nevertheless). I think they are not contributing to the WordPress project itself in a way, they are just attending to WordPress event. If we start to add badges for WordCamps attendees on these grounds, WordPress meetup attendees should also get a badge.

What comes to volunteers, I again greatly respect each and one of them. WordCamps wouldn't function without them. At least we wouldn't have so cheap ticket prices without them contributing their own time. Usually, volunteers are giving a one to two, sometimes three days, their time for the event. In contrast to other community badges (speaker, organizer, deputy, mentor), that is considerably less time given to the WordPress project - as valuable as it is. But thinking in another way, you can also get a core or polyglots badge with a relatively small amount of work.

Some volunteers also contribute more their time than others, so who is going to draw the line what is enough for earning a badge and where the line will be drawn? For example, is it enough volunteering if you design a custom Wapuu for WordCamp, compared to handling cloakroom the whole event day? Organizers might have different opinions on this, which directly affects who will get the badge and who not.

Maybe I'm a bit more towards to think that volunteers should get profile badge. But at least for now, we don't have any viable way to make it happen. There isn't any database or special field to mark who has volunteered at WordCamp. Maybe someday we will have. If that day comes, we should add a WordCamp volunteer badge.

To end up with, I do want to again note that we wouldn't have WordPress or WordCamps without awesome, enthusiast users, attendees and volunteers. This community is great. We shouldn't give too much value to some profile badges on the internet. We need to show and give the respect and appreciation in person when we communicate or meet.

For me when I first time volunteered in WordCamp, our lead organizer inviting every volunteer on the stage during closing remarks and attendees giving huge applause was the best thanks.

Well, this comment ended up being longer than intended and did get somewhat side-tracked.

Last edited 5 years ago by sippis (previous) (diff)

#15 in reply to: ↑ description @abramoca
5 years ago

Replying to sebastienserre:

Ooooh I want too! Is nice!

#16 in reply to: ↑ 9 @dd32
5 years ago

FWIW I like the idea of a Volunteer badge, but for all the reasons outlined above I don't feel an Attendee badge is viable.

Replying to hlashbrooke:

There is definitely room for a WordCamp Volunteer badge though - the main blocker to making that a possibility is having a realistic and reliable way of tracking who is volunteering at a WordCamp (and actually showing up for the work they have committed to doing. If we can work that out, then we can certainly look at adding a new badge for it.

I think some WordCamps have re-used the organiser post-type for that, and it's teams functionality to differentiate between Organisers / Volunteers / Speaker Wranglers (which is a cross-over between Volunteers and Organisers for example).

Another option is that the Admin Flags get enabled for all sites by default with some default types, Organiser/Speaker/Sponsor/Volunteer but then we've still got the issue of matching an Attendee -> WordPress.org user.

#17 @francina
5 years ago

As stated before, a badge is given for contribution. While we all agree that without users WordPress wouldn't exist and without attendees WordCamps wouldn't happen, it feels quite a forced logic. Without the world wide web we wouldn't be here, without electricty the www wouldn't exist and basically we could go back to the dawn of times :)

As for Volunteers: we talked about this in the past https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/08/09/recognise-volunteers-in-wordcamp-websites/
Main problem here is tracking who is actually showing up on the day. Flagging them with Admin Flag is easy enough, but then if something changes along the way, organisers would need to rectify this manually every time there is a change: our organisers are quite overworked as it is, no need to add more tasks to their list IMHO. So if we could create a CPT and make it easier to manage I am all for it!

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by coffee2code. View the logs.


4 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #community-team by sippis. View the logs.


4 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta-wordcamp by casiepa. View the logs.


4 years ago

#21 @TacoVerdo
4 years ago

Back in 2013, I was welcomed in the community with the word 'to be part of the WordPress community, all you have to do is show up'. These exact words made that I felt welcome, that I felt I had a place in this community where everyone knows each other. And to date, these words make that I dare to show up at a new 'table' at a contributor day.

Over time, I've collected quite a few badges. Some represent hours of work and a great number of contributions, others I received because I showed up or write a single line CSS fix for Core.

Badges aren't money. Badges aren't credit one can monetize, use to vote or do anything of meaning with. Badges are the way of the WordPress community to show that we value our people. That we appreciate what one is doing for the WordPress project. They're meaningless outside our bubble, yet can make quite the difference to welcome people into our bubble.

Last week, Mike MANUALLY gave me the badge for contributing to the hosting team. I spent most of the afternoon commenting on the handbook during the WCEU contributor day, and I got a badge for it. Was that deserved? The team, through Mike, thinks so, and I'm "wearing" the badge like a prize. It makes me want to come back to that team, because I now feel connected to them. That's what the badges should do.

Badges for volunteers at WordCamps
Having a badge for volunteering at a WordCamp would mean we show our appreciation for the work these people do, so far everyone in this thread seems to agree on that.

So what's left is practical objections. At first, it's work for the organizers. Yeah, true. It is. It would mean they have to -at first- send a list of usernames to support@… so that these people can be granted their badges. For most events, that's less than 5 minutes of work. This is not what's going to keep organizers from organizing, at all.

And if the problem then is that someone has to manually assign those badges after the emails come in; I'll do that. Because I think it's worth every second of the time it would take.

Badges for WordCamp attendees
Reading the conversation so far, I see the opinion that attending a ready-made event isn't contributing to WordPress. I could not disagree more.

First of all, attendees are paying to go to events. They're contributing money to the project. They're contributing money to events that help spread the word of WordPress. They're telling their friends about going these events, they're sharing their attendance on social media. They're voluntarily making WordPress more well-known. They're increasing WordPress' circle of influence.

But even if they weren't doing all that. What if they'd just pay for their ticket and attend the event. That would make them customers. And what is every major company in the world doing at the moment; right customer loyalty programs. Collectables. Gamification that makes someone return to their company. So even if WordCamp attendees didn't add any value for the WordPress project, it would still be interesting to reward their efforts, so that they want to come back.

"If we start to add badges for WordCamps attendees on these grounds, WordPress meetup attendees should also get a badge.", @sippis said. Well yes, you seem to understand. Meetup attendees are exactly like WordCamp attendees, we need to reward them for showing up too!

And the good thing about both WordCamp and meetups is that their signup is already happening online, so that should be fairly easy to automate.

So now what?
I strongly feel we should see the badges as a reward for contributions to the project in the broadest sense possible.

Last edited 4 years ago by TacoVerdo (previous) (diff)

#22 @jonoaldersonwp
4 years ago

Wearing my marketing hat, this is a big deal.

Gamification that makes someone return to their company. So even if WordCamp attendees didn't add any value for the WordPress project, it would still be interesting to reward their efforts, so that they want to come back.

If we value and want to encourage engagement and contribution, we need to reward it. Doubly so when it is 'free' for us to do so.

As others have pointed out, the text from https://make.wordpress.org/meta/handbook/documentation/profile-badges/ states that badges are "added based on your contributions to the WordPress project". Event attendees contribute, in a thousand important ways. They teach us about use-cases. They listen to our talks, which forces us to improve our messaging and own understanding. They become users, customers, builders, developers, evangelists. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

More significantly, perhaps, the words on https://make.wordpress.org/meta/handbook/documentation/profile-badges/ are neither sacrosanct nor set in stone. To make decisions based on an arbitrary interpretation of those words - and to continually reinforce that decision based solely on its existence - feels unpleasantly myopic and cultish. We can change our behaviour and our policies, and change the words appropriately. Or, we can expand our definition of 'contribute' to include the new audiences and attendees whom our treatment of determines whether we can keep the lights on or not.

#23 @andreamiddleton
4 years ago

I think finding an easy way to provide badges to WordCamp volunteers is a great idea, thanks for revisiting this!

On the subject of badges for WordPress event attendance... if I understand the argument in favor, it seem that Taco and Jono are arguing that participation = contribution.

When I try to apply that argument to other parts of WordPress, it doesn't hold up very well. If I ask a question in the support forums, I am participating in the forums. My question, if answered and resolved, might be of use to others who have a similar question and read the thread later, but the primary beneficiary of that action is me. Asking a question in the support forums does not get me a badge. A consistent practice of answering questions in the support forums will, though.

It seems to me that attending a WordCamp, with no other level of involvement, is similar to asking a question in the support forums, or using a translated version of WordPress. The primary beneficiary of the action is the person taking the action, rather than the organization as a whole.

That said... in 2014, some people working on WordCamp San Francisco worked out a (fairly hacky) way to display event registration and attendance on the activity log, as you can see in this example.

https://cloudup.com/c7571bdqmW4

If people wanted to work on a way to make WordCamp registration and attendance reliably (and with consent) show up in the WordPress.org profile activity stream, I think that would be a really cool enhancement.

#24 @sippis
4 years ago

Please do not continue the discussion here. There has been a proposal made in Community P2, where the discussion should continue. https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/03/proposal-recognition-for-event-volunteers-and-attendees-in-wordpress-org-profile/

#25 @sebastienserre
9 months ago

I'm just coming back home from the wonderfull WCEU2023 in Athens... and one more time, I really think all volunteer should have a new "WordCamp Volunteer" badge because they once again done a wonderfull job!

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