kk- i’ll check the mailman signup process for the OKFNau list people would have used. But generally the fallback will be to repeatedly ask people via that list to jump over to the discussion here 
Hello all.
We got a bit hung up with the first script and have come up with a different approach.
The group functionality that is built into Discuss isn’t very mature and requires central admin control which we would like to avoid as much as possible.
We’ve taken a different approach and are testing out a new badging script. We’ll have this for you all to test early next week.
With help from @Starl3n I’ve just invited 400 people to the forum…
However I noticed they and existing members aren’t being badged…

But they are being added to the okau group…

@nealbastek any clues?
Hi there!
I just clicked the invite link that was sent to me, thinking that it would just show me the group, but it additionally created me a new account (@mattcen1). I already have an account (@mattcen). The delete button is disabled in my preferences, so I can’t delete @mattcen1, and @mattcen doesn’t appear to be a member of this group. How can I (a) delete @mattcen1, and (b) get @mattcen to be a member of the group?
Fixed! Let me know if you need anything else. 
So, good news is that it looks like about 60 people are now in the Australia ‘group’ and the bulk invite worked in that way, bad news is that the badge script isn’t working.
I think I can just push those badges, and will figure that out today.
Looks like our manual badging test worked and I’m about to publish an update on that which will give local coords the ability to badge their own ‘members’ however they define it. Stay tuned.
Victim of our own progress…
Had we not used the Australian group to test the new script, and the old script still in place, all of your invites would have got the badge.
@stephen @Starl3n here’s what we propose:
- we move your badge admin back to the old script and let that run the badging for you all until you feel like the registration push from your bulk invite has run its course. (We’d be able to automatically push the badge to everyone who’s already registered via your invite as well.)
- when you want, we’ll change the script back to the new one and turn the badging admin over to you all
Will that work?
For everyone else in the pilot, we’re going to move you over to the new script and post instructions today.
Thanks @nealbastek, that sounds fine. I notice lots of badged Aussies so that’s good.
So as others accept the invite, they’ll get badged automagically until the old script changes - I think 1 week would be fine before you swap the script.
At some stage invites will expire. I guess the only question is if we re-invite with the new script, will we have to manually badge everyone or can we have both manual and automatic badging?
Here’s how the new script works (I’ve taken these steps for the coordinators and groups in this pilot to further test):
- Designate one (possibly more, we’re testing with Spain) ‘Membership’ coordinators for your group
- Designate a topic in your Local Group category that you will use to authorize membership. We recommend that this is either your ‘about’ post or a dedicated thread for ‘membership requests’.
- Let an admin know the username of the coordinators and the thread id, (the thread id is the last bit of the thread url) and they will set up the local group badge. (I have used the about threads for groups in the pilot, feel free to test this new functionality there and/or let me know if you’d rather set up a separate thread and I’ll change the id.
- Once the badge is set up, badges can be awarded to individual users by the designated membership coordinator(s) liking a post of any user in that thread. (i.e. a like by the membership coordinator in that thread grants the badge.)
- Be sure to publish instructions in that thread that define your requirement for issuing the badge/membership in your Local Group as represented here in the discuss forum. You could require something as simple as a post that says ‘add me’ or something more involved like a brief statement about why they’d like to be publicly recognized as a member of your group on the forum. It’s up to you!
Noted Stephen, it’s clear we’d like to have both options.
It’s manual badging for now with the new script, if anyone would like to do the bulk invite/badging let me know and we can work it out. We’ll consider some way to have both available more readily in the future.
What about those members who had already joined the discussion list but haven’t badged yet, there are 17 members form Nepal who had joined but haven’t badged yet!!
Awesome to have 17 members from Nepal already! I guess we should be encouraging people do do their member introductions as they join in too…
btw - I have to admit to doing a cross link just to earn another badge
Long time gamer here.
@nealbastek, I tried, but it seems like the script doesn’t work for the OK South Korea. @thechunsik added a post to the about topic and I liked it, but the badge was not awarded to him. Did I miss something? Could you help me with this? I’d like to invite more people after the meetup in Seoul on Oct. 8th.

