Today, I received the Pizzelle badge in Fedora Badges. I was awarded with Pizzelle after a short “karma storm” in the EMEA Ambassadors meeting. After finding out I was awarded the badge, I had a light bulb sort of moment. As of this month, it has been a year since I first found myself wanting to get involved with the Fedora Project. I remember seeing the announcement for Flock 2015 and how that was right next to my soon-to-be university, the Rochester Institute of Technology. I remember lazily dismissing the idea of taking any further steps into Fedora until after Flock 2015. And now, a year later, I’m reflecting back on crazy of a past few months it has been.
What is a pizzelle?
If you’re not aware already, Fedora has a unique system of rewarding positive contributions in the community through karma.
Karma is a unique way of rewarding positive interactions and actions in Fedora with a friendly, quantifiable number. In any official Fedora IRC channel, Fedora contributors can give any other contributor Karma by adding ‘++’ after their nick (i.e. jflory7++).
This “positive” karma is distributed by zodbot in the form of “cookies”. A contributor can give another contributor a “karma cookie” once a release cycle before they are able to give another one. For reaching certain milestones of karma cookies, contributors are awarded badges via Fedora Badges. Fedora uses this as a method to promote positive behavior in the community as well as help support and build community in Fedora. This reflects upon the “Friends” part of the Four Foundations of Fedora.
The Pizzelle badge is awarded to a user after received 50 cookies from other users in Fedora.
Thank you!
A special thanks goes out to all of those who have helped mentor and guide me towards contributing to Fedora. There’s really too many names to list, and everyone has impacted me in their own unique way. I hope that through my contributions, I can return the kindness and support that so many others have shown me.
I think karma is cool because it’s a simple way users can show their appreciation for others. The more karma you receive, the more you realize that it really is like karma – the more you give, the more you get back out of it. If you put forth the effort and willingness to help others, those same others will return the favor to you in one form or another.
Special shout-out to the CommOps team for working on some awesome tasks in Fedora! I don’t know if I’d be as deep in Fedora if it weren’t for the folks behind CommOps.