Improve initial account settings

When I registered with discourse in order to answer a topic, I was swamped with unwanted notifications. Both unwanted notifications on screen and multiple unwanted mails informing me of the unwanted notifications.

The first experience was annoying. Some stuff feels not only useless but rightout ridiculous to a veteran user, like notifications about great achievements like “you were awarded first emoji”. And I spent quite some time looking for the reason for the notification spam and needed several attempts to disable it.

Still can’t get of those great achievement notifications, now I am sooo proud of “you were awarded first like”. :frowning:

Is there a way to disable all notifications except for active observation of a topic and all mail notifications by default and make them opt-in? I think that would greatly improve the first-time experience for new users and make it feel more like hassle-free OSM, less like annoying opt-out facebook.

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Yes, there is:

Under Preferences - Interface - Skip new user onboarding tips and badges

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I found that setting eventually - although in a strange place. But I just need to get rid of the ridiculous badges, not the new user tips - I still have hopes that those might be useful.

You can get rid of new user notifications but the badges can’t be disabled per user AFAIK.

You can disable them (option “enable badges” in the global Discourse parameters).

By experience, nobody complained about badges on OSM France Discourse, I think they participate to a calm social climate.

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You can even disable some of the badges or define your own if needed. There are plenty of options here to tweak them as needed.

you must be the only guy who doesn’t like this kind of notification. :grinning: People usually like it because it’s part of the gamification process

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Yeah, I have the feeling I am not the target audience for that. :slight_smile:

But to a professional user it is very annoying. It get’s in the way of real notifications with actual content and it feels like being treated like a clueless child. You know, like congratulating you on successfully washing your hands after visiting the toilet
 :wink:

But I sure hope that there are other professional users at OSM.

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As a relatively new map contributor I do not really feel like an OSM professional but I share your antipathy against this absolutely childish stuff.

Does suit some kind of social media platform but not a factual/technical forum 
 but it perfectly fits the “like” button policy pushing you to distribute :heart: to other posts like a teenie on tiktok because if you don’t you will not be granted the next “trust level” 
 what a wonderful idea 
 :crazy_face: 
 as gendy54 said:

not much to be added to this statement 


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Heute habe ich im neuen Forum ein “Abzeichen / Erste Onebox” verliehen bekommen.

Was soll der Quatsch? So langsam glaube ich auch, daß das ganze Webdesign dort von Comic-Kasperles entwickelt worden ist und verstehe die Vorhaltungen der anderen Nutzer und Nutzerinnen zu diesem Pillepalle.

Das hier https://community.openstreetmap.org/u/p 
 len/badges ist doch langsam echt Kinderkram.

Und, - darf das sein? Selbst wenn ich mich sowohl im alten Forum und im neuen Forum und auch bei OSM direkt abgemeldet habe, wird der obige Link voll mit Namen und Auszeichnungen angezeigt.

Please see the solution to this topic on how you can disable onboarding tips and badges

I disabled that a long time ago, but I still get these childish rewards from time to time. They just don’t show up as notifications anymore.