I don't think hackers see value in fake awards. I for one don't see the point, except for the desire to compete to see who's got more badges on their sash. Until these badges can buy me a sandwich, pay my rent, etc, I'll leave them for the kiddies to collect.
Hear, hear. The real award for me from reading HN, would be if it ultimately made me smarter and more informed, and therefore successful in starting (and hopefully selling) a startup. Not to mention having a cool place to hang out digitally with like-minded people ;-)
Makes good sense. What if instead there're badges for hackers based on their coding ability? What would you think of that? (Not that it's easy to compute of course.)
Hack News is a place I frequent to come across interesting subject matter. It is not a place to accrue accolades based on posted material. There are plenty of other communities to visit if you want to make a name for yourself.
Rather than putting extra layers of complexity on to the site, I feel that if a plugin/add-on to the browser was offered that would provide this functionality gained enough momentum then the discussion of implementing it on to the site would be worth further discussion.
I think the biggest draw for a lot of us is the pure simplicity in the site as it is.
