Badges in Communities on Lunch is a feature where community members can earn badges through activities in a community. Badges are unlocked along the way as community members interact on the site, based on many types of activities, including rating topics, giving compliments, posting comments, quick tips, lists, and reviews. Badges were implemented onto Lunch as a way to combine social gaming on the site, and Founders can actually rename the badges to fit their communities.
Lunchers can see all the badges that they have unlocked across Lunch on the left side of their profile pages. To see badges that have been unlocked within a certain community, community members can go to the homepage of the community that they are a member of and access this feature on the right side of the page.
There are many great features on Lunch, but there's nothing quite as perplexing as those badges. There are plenty of things Lunch.com does to try to get you involved. There's rankings, those thumbs for helpfulness and quick tips to name a few. But nothing seems quite as perplexing as the badges. It's good for motivation, but at times it sort of feels like a dangling carrot held out in front of you while you're there running on a treadmill. … more
Personally I think they're silly. Never liked them from Day One. They remind me of the Colorforms that I used to play with when I was in kindergarden. Oh well, to each his own I guess!