Crikey, what a week on Steem. I love, love, love this place - the innovation, the creativity, the community support, the constant changes to improve our experience. Unless you've been under a rock, you MIGHT have noticed that there's not only a new and improved Steemit front end, but a new and improved Steempeak front end. I mean, they have OVER 50 UPDATES! Read about them here.
Yesterday, 
Check out your own profile - do you have a badge yet?
If you need a hand creating a badge, shoot me a DM on Discord. Now I've done it, I can attest it's easy enough!
Why Badges are a Great Idea
Badges easily identify the community you're part of, connecting users across common interests.
They can be little acknowledgements of love to say thanks for being an active part of a particularly tribe.
Because they are CLICKABLE, they immediately take you to the feeds of others who have that badge.
They can be fun in the way collectable items are fun.
Muting Badges
My immediate concern was - what if someone gives me a badge that says 'You're a Loser'? Of course, Steempeak have pre-empted this with the badge mute function. Some people don't like badges cluttering up their profile, and some might not want their support of a particular community well known for reasons they'd rather keep to themselves. Some communities also might force badges onto people as a kind of advertising tool as well. You might only want to highlight the communities you love the best or are most involved in - let's face it, we're all in a LOT of communities, but do we want to fly ALL of those badges on our profile?
Thus, the mute idea is really important for our own control of what our profile looks like.
To mute a badge, all you need to do is go to the badge profile, same as any other way you'd mute a user. This doesn't mean you'd mute the community. You'll see the badge profile as 'badge-00000' - that is 'badge' plus a dash and six numbers. Search for the profile and hit mute.
It's a Work in Progress - Kudos to Steempeak Team
If you haven't voted for Steempeak as one of your witnesses, you should. They are super responsive with any suggestions and to be honest, most suggestions are already in their sights anyway.
Vote from Steempeak for your witness here.
There's a few things that will very likely appear soon - for one, there will be an easier way to 'mute' from settings, and to limit the number of badges that appear in your profile so it doesn't look like a massive mess.
Even as I write this post, Steempeak are working on the best way for us all to have the best Steem experience possible - it's one of the reasons I advocate so much for people to use this front end. Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy to see Steemit has released their new look site too, but we all have our preferences!
Another Thing...
I've noticed that some people are a bit confused with the communities release. Currently, when you post in a COMMUNITY or on some front ends that add the community tag already, it doesn't appear on your blog.
This is because 'community' and 'blog' are two separate places - just as if you pinned a notice at the supermarket, and a coffeeshop.
All you need to do is RESTEEM the post from the community.
It will not say you have resteemed your own post, don't worry!
Again, work in progress - I expect very, very soon there will be an option where you select to post to community AND blog at the same time.
Have fun this week on Steem - it's a great time to be a Steemian!
@naturalmedicine II Discord Invite II #naturalmedicine
