When I see "ironic" badges from other people I mostly just want that shit out of my feed. It's one of those little egotistical poses that makes one feel clever in the moment but is really just annoying to everyone else. As if y'all care about the shitlord randos sniping at my posts. edit: this doesn't mean I'm going to stop, I'm just going to contemptuously judge everyone who does it
Ironic badges slightly bother me because they prevent the "badged" page from truly representing the best content. However, they still represent a "cost" to the user who has badged them so I would hope that it still indicates the comment is worth reading, just perhaps with a different context in mind. I do sometimes badge comments that I find hilarious, especially when out-of-context.
When we first introduced badges, the size if the community was much smaller. Therefore, it took longer to earn a badge as less people were sharing/appreciating your posts and comments. Now, I seem to get a new badge to give every single week. insomniasexx mentioned this in our Monday night team call and I think it's worth exploring slowing it down. It's supposed to be something hard earned and therefore special.
I actually was thinking about that as well on a somewhat related issue. As we gain active users it becomes significantly easier to obtain a full wheel, but after the wheel becomes full it is no longer possible (from the post) to accurately see how valued (or circled) it continues to be. I was wondering if you might be open to considering weighting the circle system as votes accumulate. Or rather if anyone thought this might be a good idea. For example, I think that the first vote a post or comment gets should always yield a circle added to the comment. But what if after that it took, say, 2 additional people to click the post before it earned another circle, or something? I don't think this is an imminent issue but I thought it was interesting. I had also considered how the speed of the site is changing.
It's hard to say what a good system is. Still, the majority of posts and comments get 0 or 1 share or click-of-approval, respectively. Then, out of the blue, something gets 20 shares, or who knows how many confidence clicks. Maybe throttling is the way to go: spoke 1 and 2 take one vote, three and four take two each, and so on. Not sure, but it's worth thinking about.
Another idea, perhaps when the 8 spokes complete the wheel in a comment, additional shares would come up as a tiny (+#) for how many upwheels it gets, like a super-superscript of the wheel. So a 12-upwheeled comment would have the fully-spoked circle with a tiny +4 beside it. Just a thought.
Yeah, it's being considered. I think it's more of an issue with comments than posts, currently. I like that I can see every user that has shared a post. But yeah, it's getting to point where we need to examine these things.