Suggest Renaming AWARDS to SHOWCASE

Hi just thought I'd throw out a suggestion for future development to rename what you currently call AWARDS to SHOWCASE as I feel it better represents the purpose of this module/task. As far as I can tell thus far you use AWARDS to award priority status to content thereby giving it prime front page realesate which is an excellent feature indeed but a name like Showcase sounds more suitable in my eyes but more importantly it could make for less conflict with a feature I would like to perhaps build in the future (ahh see I am so selfish making you change your names so I can use it myself teehee) that for all intents and purposes would do best with a name like awards (however I am sure if absolutely necessary I could come up with a new namming scheme but I am just checking anyway).

What would that feature be you ask? AWARDS would/could/may? be used for some if not all of the following features or possibilities:

Adding  Awards like Medals, Trophies, Ribbons, Cerificates, Prizes etc to Members for accomplishments.

Perhaps even extended to groups and clubs etc for either competitions or contributions etc. So in a Members (or group/club what have you) profile one could see a list of awards accumulated by those members etc. This could be used to motivate members to accomplish things or incite site activity like a Medal for the highest poster of the month or a trophy for best addon this year or ribbon for this weeks most active member or voted best theme etc etc etc.

Anyway I see this sort of future addon/feature as one that will be highly valued and appreciated by the community if it should ever come to light so in selfish preparation I am making this suggestion for your current use of the word AWARDS to be changed to something I thought might be more reflective rather than having me to strategize a new name for my future idea cause I am too lazy to come up with a better name (just kidding but I hope you can see my point that it might make sense. If not hey that's ok it was just a thought)

Duck said

Adding  Awards like Medals, Trophies, Ribbons, Cerificates, Prizes etc to Members for accomplishments.

Perhaps even extended to groups and clubs etc for either competitions or contributions etc. So in a Members (or group/club what have you) profile one could see a list of awards accumulated by those members etc. This could be used to motivate members to accomplish things or incite site activity like a Medal for the highest poster of the month or a trophy for best addon this year or ribbon for this weeks most active member or voted best theme etc etc etc.

Anyway I see this sort of future addon/feature as one that will be highly valued and appreciated by the community if it should ever come to light

Of course you are spot on Duck!

I have witnessed the importance of rewards, badges, prizes and ribbons given to members for their accomplishment on my tutoring site. It creates motivation and a healthy dose of positive competition to get all the bling attached to a profile proudly displayed with every forum post. This drives my students to continue their pursuit of badges and ranks while the course is in recess for the summer; a happy situation never seen before.

I’ve been using secondary usergroups to attach these awards to member’s profiles and I’m in the process of integrating with these groups the ocThanks addon to make it easier to see the top performing members of my community in a Hall of Fame Page. This is all done manually, while the ocThanks addon mini block already exists and with the right knowledge could be coded with these extras I believe.

What do you think? 

I do believe it would be a valuable addon for sure and can be used in so many ways in a large variety of communities and definitely would be welll received.

The method you mention sounds interesting as a work around and of course modification automation would be wonderful. I am only maybe 2/3rds way through the main document describing ocPortaL and how it works then I have more docs to read but I believe it shouldn't be too difficult to mold into the system with some hooks in the right places. It may take me a while but I aim to get there!