I apologize for 'beating a dead horse' but I think you have missed a really important concept. WCG is NOT a democracy. It is, perhaps, a benign dictatorship. Hoping or suggesting that it is a democracy does not make it so.

The most important component of the whole WCG system is the scientists. Next in priority is the system and equipment (that means the equipment is changed if the science demands it). Then comes the staff: the Admins and Techs (which means the staff work overtime if the equipment is not functioning or the scientists need help). Finally after all these people and equipment are taken care of comes the crunchers (which means if the projects are not ready or the equipment is down or the system fails while the staff are sleeping, we have nothing to do). So we are provided a Forum to voice our opinion(s) but we don't get to decide anything, except the right to choose to participate or not.

I knew this going in and it does not bother me. The leadership shown by the Admins and Techs is outstanding with their extremely high standards of performance. WCG wouldn't last a week if the crunchers were in charge. Plus we would have implemented 32 different badge systems by now. IMHO.

astrolab I am not really in disagreement with you. In fact if you read well my phrase you see two words that say it all:

"somewhat" and "co-inspired"

That's funny. Yeah, we don't need badges, we need CEP2 up to speed!!!!!