I love being on this site. But I am totally confused about this whole "acorns" thing. I have no idea how one gets these and how people get so many different icons when they post or reply to a subject. Any help would be appreciated. Kim

here's a link that tells you about the acorns and how to earn them http://garden.org/special/acor...

If you go into your profile and click "manage your microbadges" this is where you can add those different icons

I need to review the stuff on that link! Lots of ways to get acorns

Char and I try to devise ways to give away acorns here in the forum too. We hosted a contest a couple weeks ago with Sharon and gave way acorns as prizes.

If we do something like this, it will be stickied at the top of the forum.

While we are on this topic of earning acorns .... How does one go about writing and publishing a gardening idea here on ATP?

beckygardener said:While we are on this topic of earning acorns .... How does one go about writing and publishing a gardening idea here on ATP?

Look on the left hand side of page where it says plant database, ideas, etc. and click on "ideas". Next click on the "post a gardening idea" toward the bottom of the left under recommendations. From there there are a few options to pick depending on what/how you want.

Michele - Thank you! I honestly didn't know about the "Ideas" section of ATP! I just learned something new today! Very cool opportunity for everyone! Cool!

Adding 2 new questions ...

Is there a purpose for the badges other than just alerting others to information about you and gardening?

And is there any perks to the thumbs up besides just letting another poster know you like what they wrote?

Here's a link to the welcome & help center which gives directions & info. on everything asked on this thread.
http://garden.org/forums/view/...

Becky, no, the microbadges serve no purpose than letting others know the things that interest you and....they're fun.

The thumbs up are mostly just to let others know that you liked what was in that post, or approved of it etc.... EXCEPT, you never know when there will be perks to accumulating thumbs ups. Recently, Dave awarded a special microbadge to people who got X # of thumbs up answering questions in the "Ask a question" forum. No one knew he was going to do that so it wasn't something we worked for; we were just being helpful to the best of our ability & we got a surprise reward.