You are correct in stating that "People like badges". There are some people (too many if you ask me) that give more importance to the badges than the work/goal that is trying to be accomplished. I personally would disapprove of a badge that rewarded somebody that returned the most amount of WUs in X time. Some crunchers have the advantage of having more processing power than others and that shouldn't be rewarded. We are all equal here in WCG... we work to a common humanitarian goal.
Now on a parallel topic, there was a discussion/suggestion some years ago about offering a wood/pewter/etc badge for the first WU returned. I supported this idea because many people start crunching and quit too soon because they don't see any outcome right away of their effort. Nothing happened with that suggestion.

CJSL
Crunching like a box of Captain Crunch

First of all, thanks for the Muppets reference, loved that show !!! Ok, back to business. You are talking about two different concepts in your 2 posts, let's review:
This is what you stated in your first post and means that a cruncher gets credit/badge for returning a certain amount of WUs in X time (which would limit other cruncher from getting that badge). Your second concept is better since everybody can participate.

This is different than the first post because it references returning WU on time (before a reissue has to be done). Maybe an "On Time" badge? I think this would be a good incentive for crunchers help make sure that they return their WUs before their WUs expire. A caveat I see to this is the case where the machine where the WUs are being crunched goes south and messes up the cruncher's record (maybe this is not an issue since it's the cruncher's machine). Or maybe WCG goes down for unseen reasons and likewise messes up the cruncher's record (this would somehow have to be taken into account).
I think it's great that you are proposing ideas to attract more crunchers (by means of more badges).
My 2 cents worth...

CJSL
Crunching for a better world...

@cjslman

I am afraid that I must stand by what I said in my first post. I support a badge for those that return results to researchers ASAP. In my second post I detailed one of the second order effects such a badge would have. For the vast majority of people donating CPU time they could earn a badge for consistently returning 90% of results within 24 hours over the last 90 days just by leaving their computer on over night. Not only that, it would help them achieve other badges even faster if they did it. Bear in mind that I have thought a lot about this because of my time on other projects. It can't be something that one person with a Threadripper can beat in a month because they can crunch more work. The goal is long term, sustained results return less than 24 hours after being issued the task. I am talking about 90% or better over 90 days to get a bronze. A year for a gold. Only those with very old PC's or other limited hardware would be left out.

Which brings me to my next point. If you do not support badges as a sign of exclusivity then why support them at all? What are the odds that a person with only a Raspberry Pi or a 10 year old Android tablet could earn a 100 year diamond badge on the average project before it runs out of work? I honestly think a line must be drawn somewhere because the badges are not there just to recognize milestones but also to keep people interested in crunching. Even an unobtainable goal is still a goal.

As to your suggestion for on "On Time" badge I would stand with you for that. Even though all badges are in effect "On Time" badges if it can reduce result latencies I am for it. We are crunching numbers for important causes and even though science takes time of it's own, the scientists wouldn't turn to distributed computing if they didn't have a processing bottleneck to overcome. It is our duty to as volunteers to remove as much of that bottleneck as we can.

@ BladeD I know gold when I see it. I would have posted this in the chat room forum if I had doubts.

I agree with cjslman. WCG already has a better badging system in place than most other BOINC projects - they reward runtime rather than computational power.

IMO, the only benefit of badges is to continually reward users who regularly contribute. For the most part, I don't think the current badging system is failing to do that (though badges for runtime >100 would certainly be appreciated).