For goodness sakes,

I don't get it. Almost what ever is suggested as possible improvements, from what I've been able to tell, we get the, "insufficient resources" kinds of drivel.

And now, this is what we're getting?

Good Grief!

Jean,

I'm more than aware the effort necessary to put in changes to a complex software system. You'll just have to trust me on that one.

I'm much more interested in operational efficiencies of the system than badges which I hope you understand.

Expending scarce and already over committed resources on things to make badges pretty seems like a complete waste of energy which might be better utilized else where.

That was simply the whole point to this, that's all.

I appreciate all the things the technical staff does, and I understand all the effort involved. But this, IMHO, is something that could have waited until, next year, the following year, 5 years or never implemented.

Again, IMHO, the badges are nice, albeit, they were more than sufficient prior this newest implementation.

And as you so eloquently stated, I too hope I've not offended anyone from the staff.

Vinoendy: You got a point!

I think many people can decide to use green energy, like wind or the current solar energy.
I get my energy from a supplier that has got the right certificates for green energy, so I don't need to feel bad about consuming dirty energy.

I believe the badge system was to provide some recognition for the time donated.
It can also be said that the original 3 badges were geared only to the low-end users.
All they had to do was run for over 2.5 years, and now those same users have the ability to earn 10 ruby badges if they run 5 years. But your logic evaporates if even one of those projects does not run for an elapsed time of 2.5 years (which they dont). Look, nobody can even buy a new single core computer. Please get away from classifying the NORMAL user. I find it offensive. If you were researching a cure for AIDS, would you rather have 10 Normal users with a single dual core machine each (20 slow cores total), or 10 Abnormal users with twin 8 Xeon core computers (160 fast cores total)? Normally speaking, I would go for more results.

Crunchers contribute what they can. Why would you even think of labelling someone who has two computers and only uses one for WCG as NORMAL, while any user that uses every computer they can to contribute to WCG as ABNORMAL?

The WU are being done by everybody; it doesn't matter who they are. 10 computers finishing 1 WU per day have the same value to WCG as one computer finishing 10 WU in the same day. That is the beauty of WCG and BOINC. It is not about who is the fastest or the biggest, it is about getting the WU completed. It is about the science.

I am doing about 80 WU per day now. If I quit WCG, I can be replaced by 40 new dual core machines. Am I valuable? Certainly, but the 659 new computers that came online with WCG yesterday will more than make up for what I was doing.

I am valuable to WCG but not so important that I cant be replaced. BUT while I am still around, nobody can honestly say that 19.5 years donated SHOULD NOT BE RECOGNIZED.

And that is what the new badges do (in part) for the thousands of crunchers who have already earned a Gold badge in any project and who may now have a totally irrelevant and useless badge as recognition for their work.

Don't forget the month of meetings it took to decide the color, length, etc.

I expect the "Management" of this took much longer the the actual change.