Can I opt out of kudos and badges?

[Dain]

Its annoying, its childish, and the last thing I need is the stupid announcements coming in email that I attained a new badge/received a kudo/whatever.  Congratulations for having a freaking conversation... ooooh go me.

I wouldn't even give trophies to all the 4 year olds in micro soccer, they got soccer balls so they could play more.

This, when coupled with the whole attention economy dopamine hack bs that its based on, is not only ridiculous and offensive, it is NOT what ISC2 should be putting out in the wide world (let a lone to its constituency) just for clicks, and garbage metrics to attract more certification payments.

As Brett said, on the forum ISC has chosen to close, welcome to the new MCSE.

[SamanthaO_isc2]

Hello everyone, 

I wanted to provide an update on this. Currently, there is not a way to turn off badges. If you wish to turn off Kudos for a post, an Admin or Mod can do this for you on a per post basis. If you want me to turn off kudos for this post, I can do that if you would like. 

Another option that may be helpful is to turn off notifications for badges and/or kudos. You can do this from the email notification settings page, which you can access here. This page allows you to change many different settings - see the screenshot below for the full list of the notifications that are sent out the most. 

If you have any questions about any of these notifications or other features in the Community, please do not hesitate to reach out. 

[Dain]

Well thats a little better at least.  The settings page is awfully cluttered for an online forum.

Do you have any relevant information regarding the question of the unprofessional nature, and questionable metrics provided by this forum and the associated Kudos/Badges?

Do you have any information regarding why this forum was necessary when there was a perfectly useable forum already available?  What problems was this forum meant to solve?  Why did ISC2 find it necessary to spend money on developing a new forum?  What value does this forum provide in comparison to the existing email forum?

Are all admins able to access the CISSP only forum (even those without CISSPs)? 

Is anyone logged in able to view the CISSP forum?

Do you have any information regarding the 15 day shut down notice of the old CISSP Forum?

Has anyone done any security analysis of the Lithium environments that seem to be the core of this system?

Thanks

-d

[SamanthaO_isc2]

Hello @Dain, 

I wanted to provide you with an update. I am also working with some folks internally to see if there is any more information I can get for you.

This Community and all of the participants within it are held to the standards laid out in the Community Guidelines, which can be seen here. The Badges within the Community are meant to be a fun way to recognize someone’s efforts within the Community. The Kudos feature is meant to be there to allow participants to engage with an article if they find it interesting, want to give the writer “props” or a “like,” show that they read but did not have anything extra to share (like a reply), say this helped me, etc. The Kudos seem to largely have been adopted in this manner throughout the Community with engaging pieces (as determined by Community participants) being the highest kudo’ed articles.

The Yahoo Forum has not been supported by (ISC)² outside of admission permission in quite a long time and has been steadily declining in activity. (ISC)² was seeking to launch a Community for members after the sunsetting of the InterSeC Community (2016) due to a technology retirement by a third party. This Community began development internally at (ISC)² in 2017 before launching at Security Congress in September 2017. It is the only official Community supported by (ISC)² although members are free to form their own communities on any other platform.

For the CISSP Group, only those who have the CISSP Certification are allowed to see this area. This means that it is not publicly available or searchable, and any posts/content in this area will not be indexed by any search engines. All Admins and Moderators have access to all areas of the Community by default, so they can see the CISSP Group regardless of certification status, also visibility was given to all (ISC)² Staff members for now.

This platform was vetted and evaluated by our in-house security team.

Thank you,

[DAlexander]

     I don’t get overly-excited about gamification but I suppose it has more to do with my age, er…experience, than just being grumpy about things changing. Like others on this forum, I grew up earning my kudos the hard way…2nd place was just the first loser; try harder next time. I’m grateful for that and feel that it molded me into the person I am today. Just because it worked for me though, I will never claim that it was the best or only way.

     I’ve had the opportunity to work in the IT field and with the people driving it for the last quarter-century. One thing I’ve learned over and over is that you can embrace the challenge of change or eventually become irrelevant and then dismissed. I’ve seen many “dinosaurs” get stuck in their ways, fight change, and then quickly fade away. Like it or not, badges, kudos, likes, views, shares, and re-tweets are a part of our culture now. They are embedded in virtually every aspect of our interconnected world and are not going away anytime soon. Many of the extremely talented young professionals joining the ranks today have been a part of this culture for their entire adult lives. As we all progress toward the latter stages of our technical journeys it is important to pass on the lessons we’ve learned and share our stories. I argue however, that it is even more important to inspire those coming up behind us and to encourage them in ways that they can relate to. We don’t have all the answers. If we did, the information security field wouldn’t need to exist.

     I propose that if you are not a fan of kudos that you develop a new way to encourage participation. I would gladly accept coffee or money!

[Flyslinger2]

I vote coffee and money also. My yeti is almost empty this morning and I haven't waded through my error log yet.

[denbesten]

I do feel that Kudos offer one important benefit.... they improve the signal-to-noise ratio by cutting down on the number of "Me Too" and "Thanks" replies.

Gasbuddy does do just what you are suggesting.  If you play their game, you are entered in daily drawings to win $100 gas card. So far, I have won neither a gift card nor a distracted-driving citation.  

[CraginS]

I like the concept of adding simple agreement without adding another information-free post to a conversation thread. Unfortunately this discussion software has terribly mis-used the word kudos to name that simple agreement flag. A kudos (yes, the word is singular and kudo is not  word- see the derivation from Greek) is praise for outstanding achievement. Stating a fact, or making a well constructed argument, is not an outstanding achievement. Creating a successful new company, or making a scientific breakthrough, or developing a useful new tool or algorithm may be an outstanding achievement.

I agree with Dain  - having kudos to flag agreement is nonsensical, and the default notification setting for such a flag should be OFF, not ON.

Any chance we can get a global change in the software to flip kudos to agree? 

[Baechle]

Dr. Shelton,

---

@CraginS wrote:

Any chance we can get a global change in the software to flip kudos to agree? 

---

I had to fight an urge to give your post a Kudos.  😉

Something that has come up in the past is the concept of what this kind of button should really mean, "I like this," "I agree", simply "well said," or a "thank you for putting that up."

Some employers (a former one of mine) that have used social media as a vetting tool have looked at this type of response without the context of what the person using it intended it to mean.  So giving something the connotation of, "I like this" or, "I agree with this" could be problematic (unless, of course, we just don't use it).

The current Kudos word has more of a connotation of, "well said," or "thank you for providing this information."

I agree with your breakdown of the original definition of Kudos; but I think we should avoid replacing it with something that could be mistaken for default agreement with the content.

My $0.02.  

Sincerely,

Eric B.

[Beads]

I suspect Samantha O has confused security practitioners with some happy go lucky bunch. Generally, security is a very serious place and we are generally technically not socially competitive which is where the the friction on this topic starts to be noticed.

Thanks to the person who posted the 'We don't need no stickin badges' collection. I hadn't realized just what a meme it had become over the years.

[CISOScott]

I would rather have the kudos button than have to scroll through a litany of "Me Too" or "Ditto" comments. If it cuts down on those type of responses then it is worth it..