Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5056929-20130104120051/@comment-5334494-20130108050439

I am kind of leaning towards keeping them, but I will stay neutral unless the badge system is changed to give users more credit for larger, better edits as opposed to quick, cheap edits. If it worked like that, badge hunters would be making large edits, and they wouldn't even get called badge hunters. (Unless the edits were spam)

The way the badge system is now, it can lead to "accidental" badge hunting; as follows.

1. A new user comes to a wiki and sees the badges.

2. The user starts making edits to get badges.

3. Without realizing it, the user starts making useless edits because he is encouraged to get badges.

4. The user gets a warning.

5. The user thinks he fixed the problem, but is still making useless edits without knowing it.

6. The user gets more warnings, and starts talking back because he thinks he is being used as a scapegoat. (Or otherwise)

7. Argument levels elevate, and meanwhile, the user is still making accidental cheap edits.

8. The user gets blocked for badge hunting, and wonders why he got blocked.

9. (Sometimes occurs) The user checks his past contributions, and finally realizes how cheap his edits were.