After a quick look at this thread I notice that the vast majority of people posting have lots of badges and many things have been said repeatedly.
I can see from your dates of joining that plenty of you were here before the badges were introduced and almost all were here before the system was extended. That narrows most people here down to the same point of view; that what matters the most is getting the work done. This is almost as obvious as the shiny square icons, and I took that as being read. Saying it many times does not make it any more true.

There is however a new and different group of people coming to the WCG. These people are not like you; they dont have badges, points or posts. I think some of them might not want to post messages because they dont have badges and they would look out of place. Although they want to be part of this, they feel like outsiders because they have no badges or posts. Then they look at how badges are allocated. They realise that their brand new i5 only gives them half the badges that an i7 does, that their old Celeron system will take months to get a badge with normal use and someone with a Atom330 will get 4 times as many badges as someone with a faster Core solo. I think the WCG should be making an effort to keep these new people and bring more in.
So if you want more WCG participation and if you would like to hear a few comments from people that offer something a bit different, people with different points of view and experiences, people that may contribute something that we cannot, perhaps you can think of a way of keeping them, or encouraging them to participate.

PS. MM, Im not giving you my WCG password !

My friend and I say that intentionally, I think your wrong here, at least as to how people here perceive one another.
I see ALL of you as friends and teammates in this battle we've joined against disease. I don't look to see who has what badge or if I do notice them I darned well don't "pigeonhole" a persons contributions because of them.
The badges simply aren't a indicator of what a person has contributed to the project as many, such as myself, concentrate on certain projects so they may have huge amounts of resources on a few projects but nothing on others.
As to the new people you mentioned I would hope they would see the badges for exactly what they are: an attempt by WCG to recognise the amount of time people have put into certain projects and nothing more.
If people can't see the intent of the badges and keep them in perspective then maybe WCG isn't for them.
I'm going to say it again, the badges don't matter a tinkers damn, just getting the work done in the fastest timeframe does.
If one can get more work done using HT and although it skews the timeframes then it does and thats a fact.
We can't ask people to do less work just so the badges timeframe is more accurate.
That my friend would be putting the cart before the horse.
Dave
PS: I'd never hurt you with a password and the offer still holds as what is more important than personal points to me is seeing all happy with the crunching.
I think I've put maybe 5 million points in others names over the past 3 years to help them "get started"
Whose name the points or badges go into doesn't really matter as it's getting the work done. That does matter.

Dave, hang onto your system or perhaps buddy a newbie a badge or 3, to get them started. I dont need another quad, and I know its about getting points, as points = work done = scientific progress. This is why I OC. For me the badges are fun and perhaps something to reflect on. If you dont agree with my opinions, thats fine. Im trying to make a contribution. Shouting me down will just put others off expressing their opinions, hardly productive!

Hola, consejero de la comunidad, Jean Pierre.
No hay punto que dice la misma cosa una y otra vez. El hacer tan pondrá a otros usuarios del foro de la lectura y de participar.

That is very true. Someone comparing my badges with Movieman's badges could easily think that I have done more work than he has. Nothing could be further from the truth. I run pretty much every project. MM concentrates on just a few. So even though I have more red, green, and blue badges than he does, he has contributed a lot more work in total than I have. All one has to do to confirm that is look up our points totals. Even if the badge system was changed so that badges were awarded at certain points totals instead of time intervals I suspect that my badges and MM's badges would still be about the same as they are now.