Helper badges

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Starting on November 22, 2008 LibraryThing started handing out "Helper badges" to members who contribute to the system.

[edit] The Prime Directive

No whining. LibraryThing Helper badges are not "fair," nor could they be. Some important activities aren't counted, and others, like answering newbie questions on Talk, couldn't be. No one should feel bad about anyone else's awards. But you can feel justly proud about everything you do for the LibraryThing system, whether you get a badge for it or not.

In September 2009, LibraryThing started awarding "medals" for service in a special project. Medals have no degrees—they're all the same.

[edit] Badges currently available (number of contributions needed for bronze/silver/gold)

• Helper for contributions to any area of LibraryThing (25/500/1000)
  
  
• Author Combination for help combining author names together (10/100/500)
• Author Neverers for help preventing bad author combinations (10/100/500)
• Author Pictures for help giving authors photographs and pictures (10/50/100)
• Common Knowledge for contributions to Common Knowledge (10/100/500)
• Cover Uploading for uploading covers other members can use (10/50/500)
• Distinct authors for splitting homonymous authors into distinct authors (10/35/75)
• Exterminator for reporting bugs resolved as fixed (1/10/25)
• Local Bookstores for adding new bookstores and fair/festivals to LibraryThing Local (5/25/250)
• Local Libraries for adding new libraries to LibraryThing Local (5/25/250)
• Local Events for adding events to LibraryThing Local (10/25/250)
• Local Venue Matching for helping match addresses to venues (5/75/200)
• Member Recommendations for adding member recommendations to works (10/50/100)
• Picture Flaggers for help policing LibraryThing author and venue pictures (10/50/100)
• Published Reviews for enriching LibraryThing by adding published reviews (10/50/200)
• Tag Translations for helping to translate tags (10/100/500)
• Tag Combinations for helping maintain LibraryThing's tag system (10/100/500)
• Translations for help translating LibraryThing into other languages (10/100/500)
• Venue Combinations for work combining LibraryThing Local venues (5/10/25)
• Venue Photos for help adding photos to bookstores, libraries and other venues. (10/50/100)
• Work Combination for help maintaining LibraryThing's work system (10/100/500)
• Work Relationships for work-to-work relationships (10/50/200)
• Work-Spam Flagging for flagging works as potential spam (10/100/250)
• Work-Spam Voting for voting on work spam (50/250/500)
• Work Separations for help maintaining LibraryThing's work system (10/500/1000)

[edit] Medals that have been given out (number of contributions needed, if applicable)

• Abe Award for helping to link LibraryThing to Abebooks.com (2)
• Book Depocalypse for surviving the SantaThing 2010 debacle
• Corsair Commendation for helping to translate LibraryThing to Pirate (5)
• CoverGuess for playing the CoverGuess game (25)
• Friend of Indies for helping to link LibraryThing and IndieBound Data (2)
• Legacy Lagniappe for contributing to Legacy Libraries (1)
• Noble Prize for helping to link LibraryThing to B&N (2)

Badges on your profile can be identified by hovering over them with your cursor.

[edit] Badges and medals

Gold badge

Silver badge

Bronze badge

A special medal

[edit] Refreshing badges

Badges are refreshed every night at midnight (Eastern time). They are generally unavailable for a few minutes around that time.

[edit] More about this topic

For more about this see the talk thread. This thread is now somewhat out of date.

Other notes:

• On December 31, 2012, the numbers for the general "Helper" badge were increased.
• CoverGuess was briefly a badge, not a medal.