Re: Skill badges, mentors, and apprentices

On 12/7/12 6:14 AM, Chris Mills wrote:
> (Another action item form the last general meeting - write this up as a formal proposal. I thought I'd send my initial thoughts around for comment first, before recording them on the site anywhere)
>
> We should start a system whereby people are given recognition for the skills they possess, as well as the contributions they have made to the site. So for contributions, you could have badges for
>
> * Q&A moderator
> * Numbers of answers in Q&A
> * IRC moderator
> * Number of new articles
> * Number of edits
> * Number of template updates
> * Translations contributed
>
> And then for skills, you could have
>
> * Editor
> * Writer
> * Template ninja
> * Design smarts (for those like Seb and Lea, who have contributed styling)
> * International superhero: Germany, or France, etc. (awarded for certain language contributions)
> * Domain expert: HTML, or CSS (you have certain specific knowledge of different subjects)
>
> This would act as recognition, as well as letting others know what skills you have, so they can determine who best to approach if they have a query or problem.
>
> Moving on from this, we should also run a system whereby experts in different skills should act as mentors for those who want to learn. This is especially relevant to WPD specific skills like editing and template modification, but could perhaps be extended to other things. The idea would be that the mentor could train the apprentice in that specific skill, and then once the mentor is satisfied that the apprentice has reached a certain level of proficiency, award them a skill badge to say so.
>
> This would probably require the creation of a nice new icon set for this purpose. Would Mozilla's open badges project have anything to help with this?
>
Mozilla Open Badges (http://openbadges.org) provides infrastructure for 
issuing, displaying, and verifying badges, but it doesn't provide 
pre-made icons for badges. Both the visual presentation and the criteria 
for a badge are up to the issuer. (It seems to me that the icon for a 
badge should be unique to the issuer and the criteria. Reusing an icon 
could lead to confusion about what it represents.)

However, I'd be delighted if WPD used the Open Badges framework for 
issuing badges. I'd be happy to connect you with people on the Open 
Badges project to discuss further.


-- 
Janet Swisher <mailto:jREMOVEswisher@mozilla.com>
Mozilla Developer Network <https://developer.mozilla.org>
Technical Writer/Community Steward