Reporter badges sure will encourage users to report. Without benefits with those badges, they will do encourage users to more actively report. Having a badge, that is a recognition from good continuous reporting works, and a kind of honor for users/ reporters. They do will like their badges.
Reporter badges are definitely going to encourage certain types of users to report, generally those that like to stick out within a community, and I think that's fine. You'll find a lot of organizations offering achievements, and badges to encourage students to learn. For example, a number of language courses do it, as well as when we were all back in school as a kid we had a system where they would put stars on your report card if you done well etc. It does work even in adulthood.
Well I agree. I think it would be nice if it came with some small perks as well as reporting is pretty much a thankless task and even with a badge that doesn't really come with any benefits, especially since it's a time-consuming task and you're helping out the forum a lot.
I am not in right position to say this, but I think there are at least three characteristics that theymos take into consideration for potential staffs:
- Good net-effects: not only includes reports (quality, quantity), but also includes other past contributions in the forum (through threads, posts, scam fightings).
- Good reputation (trust/ flags)
- Acceptable active time: there are moderators removed due to inactive for too long.
The only previous perk to reporting was that if you were a very high reporter it made the chances of becoming a mod much higher but I can't remember the past time someone was made a mod from sheer volume of reports. I guess when the time comes when theymos feels we need more mods the list of reporters will be consulted but personally I feel like there's a couple of users who have already paid their dues and would be beneficial as staff even if it's just as patrollers (and they could certainly help out with post approval if that ever happened).