Actually cvalenti also only had 2 posts during this time! Of course the algorithm is working but they are using a wrong one. You can’t tell me this badge is for users posting two comments with 5 likes per post over users like RonGilbert having a lot more valuable posts with a total amount of much more likes, but a lower average.
Maybe not the best example because admins and mods probably are (and should) be excluded from this, but people like @lowlevel practically built this place from a discussion flow standpoint.
I don’t see a reason to exclude mods but looking at the users list RonGilbert and LowLevel should have been the most likely ones having this badge rewarded.
(oh OK, there is a reason since someone called milanfahrnholz is third 
)
I don’t know of an easy way to see data until 20th of May but I think back the top users looked similar to the current.
You´re making me sound selfish. But if I was a mod or moderator myself, I´d say the same thing.
Look at it like this: Does the boss of a company get to be employee of the month? Or even employer of the month?
I don’t see why the “new user of the month” badge couldn’t be designed exactly to award new users with fewer (but very liked) posts, as a form of welcome and motivation.
There are a lot of badges designed for people who write and interact a lot. Why not creating also a badge that rewards something different from “quantity of stuff”?
Also, you are not taking into consideration that Discourse doesn’t just count likes but it also assigns to each like an “importance” value, depending on who gave the like. This seems to me a very simple form of graph-based centrality, meaning that a post can be considered more “important” even if it doesn’t get a high quantity of likes.
A reward could be based also on the concept of importance, not just on the quantity of stuff.
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That whole likes thing isn´t very predictable anyway. I may have a lot of liked posts but not many really popular ones. For some reason my most popular post is the one where I unfavourably compare the box arts of the old and new MI2 Editions, who knows why that is.
You just happen(ed) to be third 
Because the forum software doesn’t know who is the owner of a company, probably not even who is the owner of this forum.
LowLevel made great contributions and maybe he could have been promoted to a moderator in this first month! This shouldn’t be a reason to exclude someone like him from the badge, in contrary the reason to promote him would be likely what this badge is about.
This is what the badge says:
This badge is granted to congratulate two new users each month for their excellent overall contributions, as measured by how often their posts were liked, and by whom.
In this first month everyone was a new user.
You can’t tell me that a lot of contributions with high ratings in this month (+ some additional posts lowering some like-average) shouldn’t be valued over one post with relative high weighted like-count.
IMHO the posts from users RonGilbert and LowLevel WERE overall the best contributions during this time by far and this badge should be changed to work in such way.
Well the forum software says admin and moderator next to the names, so I think it knows. And I´m not sure if the moderator promotion thing happens automatically or if you have to be awared those benefits from somone else (from what I can tell it takes at least 100 days of heavy activity).
Anyway, even though I´m very active I know I wouldn´t want to be a moderator. I was once before, didn´t like it. I don´t want people to hate me even more!
I would also add that I’ve studied the Discourse “philosophy” a bit and I think that creating a badge that rewards new users but not necessarily their “quantity of stuff” seems to me a kind of gesture that is quite compatible with the mentioned philosophy.
Also, Discourse is open source, so there is no need to speculate, we could just read the code and read the official topic by the developers.
The “admin” status is not granted by the software. In my opinion it would be a great mistake to let a software to automatically assign so much power to people.
Most people, me included, would never want to become an admin or a moderator. Automatically assigning this status to someone who wouldn’t care about moderation would be useless or even harmful for the community.
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For instance it says that the leader badge has to be granted by someone else, you can´t get that one automatically, which is fine by me. Only the devs and staff from discourse should be leaders.
Anyway, I only just realised that I haven´t been promoted to regular yet, I shouldn´t even really be on this thread, ooops!
I’m still trying to work out how to ‘complete’ my profile information. It looks complete to me. It’s bugging me that one’s unticked!
You might be missing the “bio” information. Just type some nonsense, like I did!
Yes, it’s for sure the “About me” section.
@PiecesOfKate : I think it’s interesting to point out that the “Regular” trust level gives the ability to modify the title and the category of other people’s topics.
I think it’s mainly a way to give some users the chance of doing a bit of housekeeping.
Hooray, it was indeed the bio information which I’ve now filled in - thanks both.
@LowLevel. Yeah, I noticed that. I guess it’s like low level (fnar) admin. While it’s a nice privilege, I’d feel a bit rude editing other people’s stuff.
I agree.
There are situations in which this ability can be handy, though, for example if users ask for their own topics to be renamed or moved.
“Regular” members who would like to help a bit the forum, also, might privately contact a user to ask him/her if it’s OK to move or rename their topic.
Yeah but still, being a moderator shouldn’t be a reason to be excluded from being such new user of the month badge.
It’s about the quality, but I thought high quantity of high quality is better?
e.g. 2x “good” posts are better than 1x “good” post.
I haven’t checked the code but looking at the result it’s seems apparent to me the used logic is flawed.
e.g. if you make 2x good posts and 1 posts no one cares about it should be still rated better than 1x similar good post, but it seems like I’m the only one thinking this.
In that paragraph I was talking about the auto-assignment of a powerful trust level.
About the exclusion of a “moderator” from the “new user of the month” badge, I think that it would make sense if the goal of Discourse developers is to reward and welcome non-staff new users.
In the past I have developed algorithms that had to estimate the “quality of something”. One of the main questions that you ask yourself when you have to develop such things is: is quality defined just by the good things or also by the not-good things?
Discourse developers have decided that that badge should go to users that have shown a high like-per-post ratio. They have chosen a logic that takes in account both the good things and the not-so-good things.
I’ve taken a quick look at this code snippet you’ve linked:
- admins and mods are excluded (still doesn’t include users like you). Admins may be a different thing (“staff”), but often very active community members become mods in such forums and that’s why I wouldn’t exclude them.
- Since active users also often likely do some chit-chatting (maybe even in correct areas of such a forum), then maybe it would be better to exclude posts which have no likes at all or weight the quantity in a little bit?
But whatever, you, me and all other existing members will never be able to acquire this badge by normal means since that month is long over