Badge system for OSM Delhi/NCR mapping parties

Communities India
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We (the organizers of mapping parties in Delhi) have been thinking about a badge system for a while, to encourage repeat participation and to add an extra element of fun.

We published the badge designs on Codeberg. (We aren’t professional designers, so any help in improving them is welcome. We also need to convert these designs into 3D-printable STLs, if anyone wants to help - the idea is to make badges which can be fastened via safety pins, as well as threaded into necklaces/wristbands, dog-tag-style.)

Other OSM communities are also welcome to adapt and reuse them. We’re happy to help adapt them to your needs.

I’m creating this thread to gather feedback on the tier system. Please share your ideas and your comments. After the 10th of February 2025, we’ll make a poll with all the ideas, which the community can vote on.

Constant difficulty

The one I came up with (which is also reflected in the current badge designs) is -

  • Attending 1 in-person party in the NCR region gets you an iron badge. (This is optional, as most people don’t attend more than once, which means we would have to print and give out a lot of these badges.)
  • Attending 3 parties allows you to exchange the iron badge for a bronze badge.
  • Attending 6 parties allows you to exchange the bronze badge for a silver badge.
  • Attending 9 parties allows you to exchange the silver badge for a gold badge.
  • Attending 12 parties allows you to exchange the gold badge for a platinum badge.
  • Attending 15 parties allows you to exchange the platinum badge for a sapphire badge.
  • Attending 18 parties gets you a bronze badge in addition to the sapphire badge. You can now wear two badges at once, and continue upgrading the bronze.

Evaluating our community by this metric, we have -

  • 1 sapphire mapper
  • 2 platinum mappers
  • 2 gold mappers
  • 2 silver mappers
  • 9 bronze mappers
  • 14 mappers who are one party away from bronze

Progressive difficulty

An alternative suggested by @Akbar-Birbal is to have tiers with progressively increasing difficulty -

  • 2 parties for iron
  • 5 parties for bronze (+3)
  • 9 parties for silver (+4)
  • 14 parties for gold (+5)
  • 20 parties for platinum (+6)

The advantages are -

  1. There’s a middle ground for the first badge - it’s not just given out to all first-timers, but it’s also easier than attending 3 parties.
  2. Later levels progressively increase in difficulty.
  3. We can scale to higher levels (20) with fewer tiers.

Evaluating our community by this metric, we have -

  • 1 gold mapper
  • 4 silver mappers
  • 3 bronze mappers
  • 22 iron mappers

It should be noted that with this system, if we want to scale beyond the highest tier while also being able to inscribe on the badges the number of parties they stand for, the difficulty scaling will have to be looped after the highest tier (rather than continuing the progressive increase). i.e. getting an extra iron after the platinum requires attending only 2 more parties after the 20th one.

PS - an issue common to both approaches is that people may (intentionally or otherwise) deface or damage a badge given to them, making it unsuitable for giving to others. As with other aspects, alternative suggestions are welcome.

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We also need to discuss the criteria for eligibility. Here’s what I’ve thought of so far.

(My mapper tier estimates in the first post take most of the following criteria into account, and include online events in the count.)

1. Are informal parties counted?

We sometimes have informal parties which do not receive much publicity and therefore do not have too many participants. Should these be considered for badges?

I think only “standard” parties - those announced on osmcal.org and other public platforms - should be counted, since I want to promote attendance of these events (more mappers = more mapping and greater variety of people to meet).

Furthermore, since only a select few are informed about informal parties, it would be unfair to everyone else to count these informal parties for badges.

2. How should online events be counted?

Of late, we have moved to a model where each party has an online phase and an in-person phase, held one week apart. Should attending the online phase also count towards badges?

Count only the in-person phase

Part of me wants to promote in-person participation and mobile mapping more than remote mapping, as mobile mapping provides richer and more up-to-date data, and meeting in person provides a richer social experience.

And the online phases are open to all, not just Delhi/NCR residents - how should we hand out badges to people in other states?

Count both phases as separate parties

On the other hand -

  • The online events are crucial to helping mobile mappers.
  • We have always encouraged people to attend both online and in-person parties, since we teach different editors and mapping techniques in both.
  • We shouldn’t discount the efforts of anyone contributing to Delhi/NCR data, even if they’re from another state.
  • Not counting online events could also be considered ableist, as it excludes people who are unwilling or unable to attend for health or mobility reasons.

We could send badges via courier or if/when the remote participant happens to meet us, as the participant prefers.

Count attendance in either phase as attending the same party

Even if online and in-person parties are counted separately, people with disabilities and other remote participants remain at a disadvantage relative to the others, no matter how regularly they attend online parties. Those who can attend both online and in-person phases will always outpace remote participants in ranking.

Solution - if you attend the online or the in-person phase of a party, it counts towards your badge; however, attending both phases still only counts as one.

This does disincentivize attending the in-person phase, however…

3. What counts as participating?

To be considered as having participated in a party, the participant should have at least -

  1. met the organizers (if it’s an in-person party, this means meeting them at the venue), and
  2. contributed at least one legitimate changeset
    • if it’s an in-person party, this should be in the target area
    • in an online party, this can be anywhere - even outside of Delhi, if the organizers allow.

This is for situations like -

  1. Some participants having to leave early due to sudden changes in their plans
  2. In an online party, some new mappers from outside Delhi only editing in their own state (and not in the target area, and not even in Delhi).

This way, we don’t ignore the efforts of those who turned up and mapped, even a little.

4. How should multiple associated events be counted?

We’ve had some mapping “weekends”, where we had one party each on a Saturday and Sunday (e.g. our 8th party was held in Laxmi Nagar and Nehru Place, and our 9th party was held in SFLC.in and IFF).

We’ve also had multiple parties on different weekends in the same month (e.g. in August 2024, we had one party each in Gurgaon, Meerut, and Karol Bagh).

Such cases should be counted as separate parties, since I encourage people to attend them all, in order to promote more equitable improvement of the map and potentially more social activity. There were mappers who attended in multiple or all such parties, and I want to recognize their effort in turning up and participating.

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I think we have some (or a lot of) people who contribute to Delhi data on a large scale but wouldn’t be able to attend either the online or offline parties a lot. Even though we want to acknowledge everyone who is contributing, we should restrict badges to people who actually attend the parties.

About the case of online parties, we should consider it in counting if the person is in India. Courier charges for other countries might be too high. It may give disincentive for offline party, but we can’t have everything in life.

We should count the offline and online part as one and the same for the count.

We should still count it if the region is in delhi since the end goal is to promote data in delhi. The fact that the person isn’t contributing to the target region should be irrelevant.

I agree with your rest of the points.

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