Erroneous Corsair's Crossbones

Yesterday, I as awarded the Corsair's Crossbones badge for participating in the 2020(!) Pirate Treasure Hunt. I'm pretty sure I didn't.

You would get this if you accessed any of the 16 pages during the time of the hunt. The badges for the past three hunts were all awarded yesterday. You probably don't recall what pages you accessed way back then, but you can see what they were at
https://www.librarything.com/hunt.php?y=2020&m=09

Since that hunt included the privacy page (TOS page) and the author page for William Shakespeare, probably lots of people got the badge without actively participating in the hunt. See also https://www.librarything.com/topic/333053

>2 MarthaJeanne:

I apparently got it for visiting the Zeitgeist helpers page, which is probably accurate enough I did.

Seems silly to get a badge completely by accident.

Except I suspect that you get most of your badges 'by accident' because if it were deliberate you would stop doing the activity once you got the gold badge. Whether or not you are happy to get the badges, that is not what drives you.

>4 AndreasJ:

Seems silly to get a badge completely by accident.

Perhaps, but I don't know how the site would be able to tell whether you had landed on the page deliberately or accidentally.

>5 MarthaJeanne:

The difference seems obvious enough to me: when I, say, combine authors, I mean to combine authors; when I visited that page I did not mean to participate in the treasure hunt.

>6 lilithcat:

Making the treasure hunt opt-in would be a simple solution.

Perhaps Tim would remove the crossbones from your page if asked.

Yes, I probably got that one just for visiting the Shakespeare author page while the hunt was on - or something like that. I don't see it as a big deal though. Essentially those badges are just a bit of fun anyway.

I'm now dreading how many people will be absolutely irate at accidentally getting the Pride flag badge.

Nobody has mentioned that one so far. Probably the pages were less likely to have been accessed without being in the hunt.

>11 MarthaJeanne: Especially the one for #8 :-)

Closing this as not a bug.

I think it would make sense to:

1. Give people a way to remove badges and other awards
2. In the future check whether someone has been to the contest page before crediting them with the hit. We can't do that retroactively, though.

>14 timspalding: I think that's a great idea.

You might want to put a link on the contest page that explicitly says they want to take part, and count that one instead of the contest page itself, since you will get people clicking onto the page to see what it is and then deciding they don't want it.

>14 timspalding:

Both of those sound good to me.

>10 lorax:

"Who doesn't want to wear the ribbon?"

https://youtu.be/y4bmGekgE14?t=62

melannen (#15):

You might want to put a link on the contest page that explicitly says they want to take part, and count that one instead of the contest page itself, since you will get people clicking onto the page to see what it is and then deciding they don't want it.


So to prevent this situation:

* Someone visits the hunt page (not really a contest, is there, if there are no winners?), decides not to take place, happens to visit an answer page that week, and is upset about accidentally getting a badge

you create this one:

* Someone goes to the hunt page like they have for years, doesn't notice the new "follow me if you want your answers to count" link, gets every clue, and doesn't get the badge because they didn't click on a random link

?

That hardly seems like an improvement.

A simpler solution to people inadvertently getting badges might be to up the number of found items needed to get a badge to two or three.

>19 amanda4242: - agreed! This would certainly nearly eliminate the problem, since the chances of accidentally stumbling across multiple pages seem pretty low.

> 19 Yes, that would probably do it!

Alternatively >18 lorax: I guess there could be an opt-*out* on the page. (Hey, it would be nice if there was an opt-out that also made the banner go away...)

FWIW, I think opt-out would be better.
I only got one 'hit' in the recent hunt, but think I deserve a badge for working that one out.

Opt-out on the banner and the hunt page should do the trick

>14 timspalding: Give people a way to remove badges and other awards

Giving users a "make this badge private" checkmark/tickbox/toggle would align with other LT privacy options (private book, private account, private comments), and placing it in the user's control to revisit and undo would avoid a need for staff to be called in to restore inevitable accidental removals and such.

That alone should avoid any worry about installing extra hurdles on event badges? As any upset recipient could then hide any badge that they didn't want to have earned.

Aligning with the never-has-worked "private books" feature is the last thing anybody wants!

>25 lorax: Oh, I'll have to dig into the forums to read up on what you're referring to there, as personally I've found it satisfactory (tick to private and other members can't see it in your catalog), as a basic function, and the parallel I was aiming for with the tick-untick functionality and familiar terminology. Do ignore that example then, of the three, if it has associated baggage making it a poor comparand.

>26 Nevov: You have a 50/50 chance of that book getting so private that even you cannot see or touch it anymore :) If you have never had that issue, you had been very very lucky :)

Thanks, both, and allow me to swiftly recalibrate my opinion as I now scramble to verify that the few I have privated I could tolerate leaking out through one of the holes in what I assumed was a solid hiding method. I can only imagine the amused/horrified look that either of you might have had as you read my post!

>28 Nevov: “oh you sweet summer child” was my reaction :)

LT has some hidden corners that look like a great idea until the skeleton comes out of them with a big knife. ;) That is one of the old old skeletons that Tim steadily refuses to either fix or remove - it was a beta code that made it out the way it often did in those days - but never got really developed or fixed (which was what was happening when the code was added too early). Some people get lucky. Some come complain and we explain. Some decide that the site is nuts and give up.

And any new or fixed functionality may just ignore the setting even when it seems to work otherwise - thus making the book visible in some places. :) Those you won’t even realize are happening until you stumble on one of them or someone asks something about that book. :)

PS: and I am not implying that you are new or inexperienced. You could have been here from day 1 and still get caught into one of those weird things you just never stumbled into or needed to untangle or explain to someone. LT is a huge site. Any time you think you know all it can do, you discover something else.

Did anything happen on this front? I'm not seeing an option to delete or hide a badge yet.

Nothing yet, no, but thanks for the reminder. I'll bring this up to timspalding, but don't promise an immediate timeline on it. I'm guessing it will get bumped behind some LT2 projects. Thanks for your continued patience!