nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 I noticed you have a **lot** (79) of badges and I wonder if you could help me with your opinion. Are badges here to stay? I saw sentiment to remove them from certain clients and little effort to improve their meaning. Snort appears to have removed badge management? nostr:npub1v0lxxxxutpvrelsksy8cdhgfux9l6a42hsj2qzquu2zk7vc9qnkszrqj49? Coracle shows no badges. Iris doesn't. Amethyst shows badges. Damus I think does not?

Your badges mostly look like fun meme things. "Hellthread survivor" is perpetuating a spam attack. "Elite NostrGram User" supports a dev (who's client also supported badges and badge management). "Nostr developer" I would call a badge of honor. If I knew this wasn't given lightly ... I would consider it a strong indicator of awardees not being bots at least.

But as soon as something has meaning to others beyond being a meme to laugh about, in other words as soon as people might aspire to obtain a certain badge, what is to stop them from just self-awarding them any badge they want? Maybe with a new account that is given the author name of the to be copied badge? In the latter case they could always accept the badge and claim innocence. They didn't know it wasn't the real badge.

My vision is to - beyond accepting badges personally - ascribe relevance to badges one does not personally hold. To sort the relevant ones first. So when opening your list of 79 badges, for the first time, they would all be marked as irrelevant and I could mark them or their authors as relevant using nip51 lists:

(*) not relevant (default)

( ) relevant badge in its current state (e-tag)

( ) relevant badge (a-tag)

( ) relevant badge author (p-tag)

By marking for example the "Nostr developer" as relevant and assuming a client that shows only relevant badges next to TextNotes, I could smash that follow button much easier when recognizing that badge. It would have meaning.