Badges
Badges are little pictures that appear below a member's member bar. They are used to motivate contributing members, and honor them with visual tokens that represent their good deeds.
History
Before Retriever II implemented badges into the forum software after the phpBB version of the forums were introduced, badges were actually used back in the earlier years. For a brief period of time in 2002, a member (currently unknown who) presented the idea of giving out small awards he believed certain members should receive. Eventually this idea grew to other members who performed the same activity, upon being grateful for receiving a textual award from this member. As it continued branching out to other members, it turned into actual award medals given out to members. The medals somehow reformed into being named "badges," and not long after, members were creating image badges for each other, which could then be put into their signatures for others to see. It's not known if the idea for badges on the forum software years later was sparked by this or not.
