What are you talking about? I think we work to help people, not to earn badjes... Of course it's pleasant to see that your work have been noticed and estimated. I think we should worry about badjes only in the secon or in the third turn... It's my opinion...

Exactly.

People have been accused of "badge hunting" on this forum in the past, although in reality, "what is a badge?" - to me, it's just a sign of recognition that x% of CPU time has been invested into a particular project.

I'm sure we all have our own 'pet' projects (as is quite right - I certainly do), although I also like to contribute to all the other worthy projects on WCG.

The image below the nickname is a great idea that keeps people crunching. Questing for that badge is what keeps them crunching over a longer period of time than they normally would and helps the projects at the same time. Most people would quit after a few months without that shiny object appearing below their name. The attention span of the human race sucks and without the constant stroking of the ego nothing would get done.

So while your opinion is valid from a certain point of view and I also share most of it because my sister has cancer (its why I crunch). Most people do it as a way to compete, whether for points or badges and braging rights.

I also like to get the badges and I donate a minimum of 1 year to each project, but I have 4 quads and a dual so it takes very little away from my main crunching area.

So in finishing I think the badges and the competition are what gets us hooked and its a great idea for them to encourage us to celebrate our small accomplishments so that it benefits the whole world. Silly maybe for you, but a damn smart idea to keep the grid crunching and make all the projects sucsessful.

k.t.

So the conclusion is motivation. Find a way to motivate people to crunch. And I thing that badge ranking do give motivation for a lot of people... among a lot of other motivation sources of course.

Of course my investment in our common deal is not so big as investments of others. Some times i wasn't present on the project because of technical reasons for a long time. But every time i come back. And I don't put under doubt yours level of commitment.