For those of you who dont follow Jeff Atwoods blog, he and Joel Spoolsky are creating a question and answer site for programmers called Stack Overflow.
Its in late beta now, and its great, to make it more than just your basic Q&A site theres a reputation score (based on how many people have up-voted your questions/answers) and badges, which were inspired by Xbox Online. The community is also top-notch.
The badge system is a great motivator for users, I currently have four :
- Autobiographer (For filling out my profile)
- Supporter (For voting up someones post)
- Student (For asking a question that has been up-voted)
- Teacher (For giving the first answer that has been up-voted)
There are many others, and with 3 “grades” of badges, namely Bronse, Silver and Gold, the badges above are all bronse.
You can sign up for the beta here, if you do you’ll recieve the beta tester badge when the site goes live.