Two Suggestions

[Staraptor Call]

First of all, the Simple Questions thread in Stark should always have the IVs for Bold HP Fire and HP Ice Celebi in the OP. In almost every Stark SQSA thread someone asks what they are, and since they're not in the Celebi analysis they're hard to find. Either add them to the Celebi analysis or put them in the SQSA thread's OP.

Also, the #smogon IRC op badges are no longer necessary. While #smogon is the official Smogon channel it is not the most-visited one, and activity there has little to do with actual contributions to Smogon. The IRC op badges are mostly just a mark of being liked by the other ops and being part of the Firebot "in crowd." Being an #smogon op has little relation to how much someone actually contributes to the site, and the purpose of the badge system is to get people to contribute to the site and its projects. The #smogon op badges are no longer useful or relevant, so they should be taken out of the badge list.

 

[mingot]

I'll let the stark moderators weigh in on your SQSA query.

As for the #smogon badges: The social part of Smogon is a part of Smogon. IRC is part of Smogon. They contribute to this part of it, whether or not it's something you, personally, participate in.

 

[Cathy]

Your criticism of the op badges is valid, but it's a longstanding debate and it probably won't be resolved by this thread.

 

[Aeolus]

1) For the first suggestion, those values should just be added to the Pokemon analysis page. Thanks for bringing that up.

2) I suppose if you want to define badges as being strictly for site contributions then I'd agree with you... but that isn't at all consistent with how things have been done since the beginning of the badge system. Notice there are badges for being a Shoddy Battle mod or admin in addition to being forum moderators... neither of which is directly related to site contributions. In fact, one could argue that most badges we have aren't directly related to creating or improving site content. I don't think the criticism is valid, but fresh opinions are always welcome. Realistically, that is a policy that isn't going to change (and I don't see any reason why it should). Obviously our recognition system isn't perfect, but chaos has plans to make changes in the future... so we'll see how that goes when we get there.