Question

Just out of curiosity, how does everyone use the medal/fan system? Like, when do you fan people and when do you give medals?

Personally I like to give medals or become someone's fan when people are really thankful to someone who has answered their question.

Then I also like it when I'll just sort of spontaneously get little mini alliances with people when I'm on a roll and someone else is at answering questions and we'll just sort of give each other medals and kind of motivate each other to keep teaching and helping, which is kind of cool too.

So what about you guys?

Answer 1

Well i feel the medal system should be used for the best answer of the question asked. That gives the answerer satisfaction of giving good advice and telling him or her that they are doing good at the thing there answering. This is a great system to get good opinionated answers!

Answer 2

I usually fan people if they are good helpers, or fanned me first. But, with medals, it goes to best answer.

Answer 3

I fan people who have helped me greatly, like when I was studying for the SSATs a couple users helped me do some of the practice questions. They helped me understad the questions and went over them with me. This helped me a lot and I fan other users who do similiar things. I also fan the fun and interesting people I meet in chat. Though I only fan the best of the best ;P Haha, as for medals, I sometimes give them to people who helped answer the question while I random scroll through questions in Math, English, Chemistry and so on. Or I medal people who did a great job on guides(LaTeX guides for example) and people who are just awesome ;3

Answer 4

In order to fan a person you have to click on their name and click become a fan in the top right corner. Ok

Answer 5

Ily Kai <3

Answer 6

i always give the medal for the person who ask if i teached, :D
but if asked the question i give it to the lowest SS , or to ppl ik lol ( like ganeshie , or mashy )
if the question was already answerd i give it to the best answer..
i dnt fan back lol
i only fan ppl i found them cool :P

Answer 7

i medal people who do a good job tutoring the material. or if its the asker, when theyve done a really stellar job at participating.

fan and testimony is few and far between ... has to be a real connection, at least in my own mind. myin, satellite, radar, ... and a few more.

Answer 8

If I am the one responding to a question already, I will typically medal the user who participates and is thankful in the end. Unless someone exceptional comes by to help teach with unique content, which I generally favor..

If I am observing a question or I see an answered question with no medals provided, I will usually give the medal to who most effectively engaged and explained the student. If I am at a loss for deciding between participants, I will generally give the medal to the lowest SmartScore user so they get a chance to shine pretty green!


I reserve the fan feature for users who have specifically taught me something new / interesting. In fairness I am forgetful of what I learned from each individual (many I fanned last year now), though I do have some memories of one's killer introduction to Group Theory (great pictures of dihedral and symmetric groups) and one who discussed how to find the number of digits in a base-10 number (digits of N = floor[log(N)] + 1). Currently I have about 56 that I fanned. :D

Answer 9

Yeah, I really like these responses they're pretty thoughtful and truthful. I also have to agree with @AccessDenied that I will often fan someone and forget why specifically unfortunately. I think part of it is just because content is sort of hard to access and things in the past tend to just fall into obscurity. It might be nice if I could just look up all the interactions I've had with one other person, messages, medals received by/given to, questions participated together in, etc... Interestingly enough I noticed you're one of my fans haha, I wonder what I said.

I'd also like to add that I like to give new users medals. Just to hint them off that the medal system exists if they don't even really know to give me a medal for helping them out. Sort of like a little bait or incentive to spread the love and follow etiquette lol.