Badges

What they are

Badges mark what your writing adds up to: firsts, runs of days, special version numbers. Each one is stamped with the version you earned it on. There are no leaderboards and nothing to compare with anyone, and nothing ever points out a day you missed.

Nothing is taken away. A track’s tier is earned at your best run, not your current one, so a break costs nothing you already have. The one exception: delete the note that earned a badge, and the badge goes with it.

Signed in, You, then Badges, shows them all: what’s coming up in this release, your tracks, everything you’ve collected, and what’s still to find, with how to earn each one.

The shelves

Tracks climb through tiers, from alpha to beta, rc, stable and LTS, for years:

• Continuous delivery: days in a row with a note.
• Cadence: weeks with notes on four days or more.
• Patches shipped: days with notes, all told.
• Coverage: the share of a release’s days that have notes. Each release earns its own.
• Roadmap: dates you’ve added to Upcoming.

This release follows the year of life you’re in now: its coverage, and the special days ahead in it. It starts over on your birthday.

Firsts and craft are earned once, for trying each part of Release Notes and for richer days:

• Firsts: Hello, world · ACK · Web release · Webhook · Pair programming · Release assets · Audio changelog · Geotagged · git tag · Dependencies · Commit message · Hotfix · Backport.
• Four come from outside your notes: Signed commit, for a profile photo; Issue opened, for sending Jamie feedback; Merged upstream, when your feedback gets built or fixed; and Tarball, for making a book.
• Craft: Full stack · RFC · Taxonomy · Multi-region · i18n · Cold start · Hot reload · All-weather build.

Collectibles are for writing on special version numbers: Release day, Code freeze, Round number, Palindrome, Backward compatible, Version history and Major release. Each release has its own album of them to collect again. And a few badges are secret.

Giving has a badge for each calendar year you’re a Weekly Thing Supporting Member, named for that year’s nonprofit. This year’s is Supported Signal.

When you earn one

The page where you earn a badge says so as you save. The next morning’s email names it, with a link to all of them, and if you come back to the web first, it welcomes you back with what’s new since your last visit. Each badge is told once, and badges never send an email of their own.

Show badges

In You, then Settings, under Badges, turn off Show badges and they leave your emails and pages. Nothing is lost, and turning them back on shows everything earned in the meantime.