So registration achievements started initially as a joke but almost immediately became a real plan because it was just that awesome. In 2012 we came up with the idea and wanted to do it “someday,” and early 2013 we decided that for 2014 (year 5) it would be a great thing to do. We discussed it a lot, came up with exciting plans, but didn’t really do much until 2014 came around.

I put it in place. It was one thing I was super excited about and I was not going to let it fall behind because it was something less immediate. I tend to let the other programmers work on the important or immediate stuff, while I clean up the database, work on fixing things that bother me, come up with new modules (“bits”) and things like that. Sam worked on his bit, Ryan worked on his bit, Sammich worked on important things only Thomas understood, Thomas worked on annoying things that needed to get fixed. . . etc.

I put the achievements code together on a very slow afternoon at work. I managed to get it working in about 2 hours after I got home (it never works without testing).

I feel that the achievements system is a wonderful marketing opportunity. We can make achievement badges that people can post to their webpages, forum stuffs, facebooks, etc.

Some achievements/scores start as of 2013, some 2014, and some go all the way back to 2010. It really just depends on what we were tracking and how. Panelists were only started in 2013, while masquerade hasn’t been successfully tracked yet (hopeing for 2014). So, although it sucks to be missing some data and starting at random times, the fact that we’ve got what we got is (IMO) pretty damned cool.