Have you implemented gamification features on your community?

[Toni]

Gamification features are popular in today's online world when it comes to online communities. They are often used to encourage community members to engage and participate in the community in return for rewards and other gamification options that may be available. 

Have you implemented gamification features in your community? How are they working out for you? 

[Maria]

There are two types of community users, one, who are passionate about discussion and they will continue to use the community without needing for anything in return, and two, there are users who need some sort of compensation. sadly, it is difficult to find users who are truly passionate about community engagement. These days you are required to compensate users in some way

[JoelR]

Several years ago, there was a big push by professional community managers into understanding and implementing gamification.  Now, most professional community managers shun gamification as a major feature.  

My personal take is the elements of gamification (which are nothing more than behavioral psychology) are still valuable: 

- Encouraging users to compete or race against another 

- Rewarding users as they progress 

- Setting challenges or goals 

And there are multiple areas in the community to implement these steps.  It's not just badges and titles, but being thoughtful with your language strings and notifications and emails.  

[Como]

I do not understand 'badges'. And neither do any of my community's team. In fact, the team generally shuns any metric except for post count. When I switched to Invision, I enabled reactions (and the dependent reputation system) and I think most members like this. A few members reacted negatively at the time ('it's just like social media') and most of the team were concerned about it too. And although the team still have some mixed feelings about 'reputation', I think they have mostly come around to finding it a positive metric. And certainly it is useful to have a shorthand way (reactions) to acknowledge a contribution from another member - I think we all like that.

Our community is probably atypical. A lot of members are somewhat vulnerable, so there is the potential for harm if the space became overly competitive. Further, I'd say I actively dislike notifications relating to meaningless (cut from whole cloth) 'achievements'. It feels (and is) utterly contrived and distracts/detracts from meaningful notifications. And I have no idea what any 'badges' I might receive actually mean. (They generally mean nothing, don't they.)