That’s cool – I love a good debate as much as the next girl.
I don’t disagree with your individual points, just that they don’t always apply to all communities IMO. But that’s what’s great about Discourse – you can customise it to fit your audience.
I think that badges are one form of education mechanism, but the downside can be that their proliferation can devalue the other badges. The bronze-sliver-gold tiers make sense to you but I’m not sure that they are wholly intuitive for everyone. Sometimes it can just feel like “oh… another badge”.
Of course, but a good CM will have a gamification strategy and the time and resources required to make that work will be factored in.
No argument from me on that. What I’m saying is that I don’t believe that the default silver and gold badges do incentivize that for all groups.
In summary, I think the existing badge system is excellent out-of-the-box but I’d encourage people to think about whether it customising it for their own environment might add value in some cases.