Proposal: badges and achievements for volunteer contributions

Motivation

The heading says it all: (volunteer) motivation. The general idea is to have BOINC support the notion of "badges" that represent various achievements and can be assigned to a volunteer's profile. Those badges should motivate the volunteers to keep contributing as they, apart from (un-sexy) credits alone, can show off their individual contributions in a more tangible and meaningful way. The idea isn't new and projects like World Community Grid already support the assignment of achievement badges which are then displayed in the community section, e.g. as part of the forum post author details. We propose to standardise and extend this feature to all interested BOINC projects and beyond.