User blog comment:D.Ryan/Is the BioShock Wiki behind in the world? III/@comment-1330314-20111020223633

Gardimuer and Gamboy84 are right, the badge system isn't particularly effective. On one hand, it encourages frequent, low-quality edits or ever downright spam, which not only drowns out the good edits but also makes it harder for the admins to monitor the edit flow. On the other, it discourages true dedication to the wiki and replaces it with automatic rewards and prestige wars.

The thing is, we need people to edit on our wikia in good faith, that is, they want to edit because they genuinely want to add to the mainspace and/or enrich the community. Right now, we have a strong base of more or less permanent wiki residents, all of whom contribute positively without the need for badges, and save for the occasional grammar oversight there isn't anything that would require a mass of new editors to solve. Were we to add badges we'd end up with a lot of new editors who'd constantly pop up at random, clog the edit count and leave in the space of a week. Since most of our work here revolves around maintenance and quality improvement right now, that's the last thing we'd need.