Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-11008902-20141226235147/@comment-1738746-20150116040946

I love how people keep saying that the badges provide incentive for newbies to edit on the Wiki. That's a terrible incentive, and goes against the purpose of the Wiki. People's incentive to edit should be internal, and should come from things like seeing a page that's missing information you know, or knowing you have the skills to make a page better than it currently is. It shouldn't be about getting that one badge. If you said 'ooh look I could be the top member of the Wiki if I keep editing x and y pages!' as your incentive to edit, that's quite sad.

That being said, I really agree with the comments made about the leaderboard being a good way for newbies to see who is most active/actively contributing. However, if you're a member who holds pride from being at the top of a badge leaderboard as some have comment on this thread, that's quite sad too- you should be proud of your actual contributions and edit count instead. This is what the purpose of the Wiki is after all, contributing to articles. Your edit count and contributions reflects better your actions on the Wiki rather than some silly badges. You could argue that the badges themselves show your edits & contributions as well for those of you who use the system honestly, but then it also shows you did those things to get a fancy title rather than actually help out the Wiki. Your goals should be to make this place better, not to rack up some badges and fancy titles (e.g. "Top 10 of the Wiki"). This place isn't a game where you "achieve" things, it's a Wiki where you contribute knowledge (I'm also well aware that there would be people at the top of the leaderboard right now who don't even care about the leaderboard or that they're top at it- even more of an incentive to remove it I guess).

Is there any possibility a different page that is similar to the leaderboard can be used instead? That shows users with the highest edit counts instead of highest number of badges/points? I'm more on the side of removing this badge system to be honest- even if it's a minority of people who abuse it, it doesn't provide a worthy reflection of how users have really contributed to the Wiki for those who are using it properly. As well as that, there are incidents where innocent users get accused of badge hunting for minor edits and this discourages them from editing- I had this happen to me on another Wiki and still to this day, I'm too afraid to make minor edits to correct a spelling error on a page or fix some bad formatting on a single line, in case people think I'm badge hunting.