So when our team was discussing gamification and badges, we, among things, came to the following.



When you see a badge, potentially the % of other members in the community that have this badge influences how much you may want this badge yourself. Per example, psychologically a number of the more active users will fall into the categories “I don’t want to be left behind” and “I want to have all the badges”. Gaming communities like Steam have been using this method for some time.



Practically.

Now if you would measure all the members of the community for a particular badge, the percentage would be rather useless. Because there is a very large group of members that register and don’t do anything or very little and you would end up with something like 0,00002%.



But, here you can again look at the gaming communities. The percentage is logically only measured among the people that have the game to which the badge belongs.



So how does this help us?

If we relate our userbase to the gaming communities. If we can set certain metrics to which user groups or ranks should participate in the badges and therefore the percentages. We would be able to give a far more convincing goal to our users. After all, most badges are only gained after a certain amount of goals has been achieved. Which already excludes them from a number of users.



Per example.

A percentage for a badge given for an X number of answers in a certain category. This could be linked to all users that have at least one marked answer within that category. In that way you only see the % towards the overall ppl that are actually in the race for the badge.



Conclusion.

Not all badges might be usable for the percentage look. For some it might be too much, like a 10.000 reactions badge. You should draw a line between which badges are meant for deeper engagement and which ones are more generic.



In any case, with some modification, a lot of existing badges can be tailored more specifically to the user groups that are actually on the path to that specific badge.



So to everyone, what are your ideas on this subject?