And when YOU volunteer for work for a charity, do you really think they are interested in doing the training for people who are going to work for .36 hours. The last National championship event I worked at required a volunteer to give 50 hours, otherwise 'stay home'. The last championship I watched on TV required 500 volunteers to do that. Commit or Forget.

But if you think that .36 hours is adequate commitment to be rewarded for your effort, on a project that needs 20,000 years, then so be it. I disagree, apparently, strongly.

Well astrolab,
I'm here since 2004, as many crunhers crunchers too, and since I started never get a WU with .36 hours of duration in my machines, except for few ones in the very recent Beta's and DDDT2 WU's (this year !)...

So, sorry but I'm compeling to believe that the issue with your acceptance of this idea, appear be other than you are trying show us, maybe something related with the fact that you probably won't get any new badge if this thread request go ahead.

I really don't know what the problem, and I'm not here trying start a war with you to became it public, once it doesn't matter except for you (on the contrary, once I ever will defend the fact that anyone have the right to have your personal point of view about anything, different or not of any other people).

Meanwhile, if you invest this huge energy to build better the ideas you are presenting, I guess that maybe you will reach more results defending your perspective of things.

But unfortunately, when I saw yours coments in others threads in the forums as many of us saw and are mentioned here, specialy in one thread recently started were you are trying nock down the original idea of the thread just with an approach that appear be due not met/include your personal situation/condition as a cruncher, and in this way excluding you from the scenario, I saw that you have a lot of ambiguity in your mind, once assume distinct sides when it is suitable/convenient for you. So, I guess that you need rethink a lot about take a clear decision regarding what side you will assume during discussions in WCG involving exclusions/inclusions of crunchers/people in something posted here.

The last but not least, I would like to ask you be wise and be aware in depth about it I just mentioned above, at least to avoid this lack of consistency observed, but I guess that you are smart enough to evaluated it alone without any advice.

So, returning to the main discussion / idea of this thread, please be our guest to build clearly your defense pro or cons it, and share with us what is the real kind of problem we or WCG will have, if the thread idea go ahead (once appear be just more an adaptation to return to the original badges rules with a diference in the time to get a type of badge) ?

While it's obviously up to WCG to make that decision, personally I'm also against "blank" badges rewarded for showing up. Having a whim on trying WCG does not equal dedication.

What will be next? "Sorry"-badges for those who signed up too late for project that already ended? "I wanted to join but nobody told me before" badges? "I never ever get the Beta WU's" badge? " I did not have a computer when WCG started" badge?

astrolab will never get the full set of badges, and rightfully so. GIBA does have the full set, also rightfully so.

Anyway, isn't WCG considering "certificates" at this moment? I seem to remember reading this somewhere on the boards.

Timelines... easy to ask, hard to give.

This discussion about creating lower badges (1 week, 1 day, 1 hour, 1 second, 1 nanosecond) might be solved automatically if the certificate system is created in a way that pleases the nanosecond contributers.