Believe it or not, WCG has access to professionals artists to make it work, whatever comes out.

I like the idea of adding year numbers to the existing badges, and the added color above gold seems like a good idea too.

-aann

We are aware of this request but at this time we are not acting on it (this is neither rejecting nor accepting). When we do take this up again it will also be considered along with the global contribution plateaus' (i.e 180 days of total contribution, 1 yr, 5, yr, etc - don't take these as the final nums) and the associated printable certificates that will be available.

However, we have a tough schedule coming up with beta testing for the next project starting soon, managing our existing projects and we are deep into work on the upgrade of the forums software.

As I am getting older I find it more and more difficult and more and more painful!

Seriously, back to one of your previous posts, you were reluctant to badges showing simply the number of years contributed to a project, implying that switching from one level to the next would be too easy and would happen too often.
We certainly appreciate the level of your contribution but you should understand that WCG will not develop features which address only the 300 more powerful of their members. As of today there are 89,551 members who have got credits during the last month, and only 2,150 have a RAC higher than a basic quad running at stock speed (1,800). Even for such a machine dedicated to a single project it would take at least* three months to contribute one more year for this project. This is far from "every day", and for the 87,000 others below this (arbitrary) reference it would still be a serious challenge.

Please never forget, badges are made for motivating members, not for discouraging them. Jean.

Edit: Added "at least*", because it obviously depends on how long it is switched on every day and on what it is doing beside grid computing.

Thanks for the information. I have wondered about relative sizes so this is interesting. I suggest that a new member starting today with a singe quad as mentioned (or 2 C2D) could have all the current available Gold badges in less than six months. Since you cannot buy a new computer less than a C2D, for new members I do not believe this is a stretch. So after 6 months what motivates them?

While we have the 97.6% below that arbitrary line, all of the P3/P4 computers are going to be replaced with minimum C2D over the next 1-4 years, rapidly growing the base and rapidly increasing the number over that RAC line. I wonder how many members were over that RAC a year ago? and a year from now. How is WCG going to react if the 2150 number becomes 8600 in a year?

I am not sure where the 300 number comes from, but I wonder how many members have 180 or more days on any one project? How many have 90-180 days on one project? Those are the target groups. To get to 1,2,5 years you need 180 days, which I think is the next logical badge level (if any). My point about the 1,2,5,10,20 progression was not necessarily that you WOULD develop those badges, but that it sets WCG up for a logical progression that you COULD logically grow into. It is a progression that you can easily defend no matter how big WCG gets.

It's a matter of delivering objects to motivate two diverse groups. At one end you have the 2150 "super" crunchers and at the other end you have 87,401 junior crunchers. One of my points is that every one of the 87,000+ crunchers have the opportunity to grow and cross that arbitrary line AND that the technology is pushing all of them that direction. New and existing members are not going to setup smaller computers. We are talking about a problem caused by WCG getting bigger, but it is not really a problem is it? Thanks