VideoSift is a working-bee kind of place. There are jobs to be done- and up until now we haven't been that great at recognizing the Sifters who put in the work around here.

Today we're introducing a slew of badges to be worn with honor on profiles- indicating an achievement that is noteworthy and beneficial to the Sift. Here they are:


The Grim Reaper is the tireless scythe-person who seeks out and erradicates dead videos on the Sift using the *dead invocation. They might be a bit gloomy- but they provide an invaluable service. Don't fear the Reaper.


The SuperDuper has a brain that stores the title of every other video he or she has ever seen on VideoSift - and knows where to find them. They're also banned from Blackjack tables. Some people are really good at finding duplicate posts and this is the badge for them. The SuperDuper badge is awarded if you've been successfully declaring *dupeof or *isdupe on a bunch of videos.


The Necromancer is the yin to the Grim Reaper's yang. Necromancers seek out dead videos in The Dead Pool and supply fresh embeds, bringing these posts back to life. This is an important service because not only does it revive the video, but also the comment thread- which is sometimes better than the video itself.


The Golden One is the highest honor bequeathed on a video post. It's awarded for posts that have reached the number one position on the Top 15.


The Silver Tongue is for the commenters. Not everyone likes to post videos- some Sifters make contributions by amazing, insightful, witty or informative comments. The Silver Tongue badge is for these people.


The Pop Star knows what you like. If you find your videos frequently make it into the Top 15 - you may find yourself awarded with a Pop Star badge. This badge indicates that you know what people like, and we know that you know. ;-)


The formula for awarding the above badges is not public knowledge and may be subject to tweaking. In other words- we're not saying how many *deads equals a Grim Reaper badge. The Golden One badge is a little different because it's awarded each time you get a #1 post in the top 15.

We're also using the concept of leveling for each badge. So, once you are a SuperDuper Lvl (1) you can ascend to Lvl (2).

Achievements are not retroactive, they start from right now.

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In addition to the achievement badges we're also awarding an anniversary badge each year from the day you joined. For the record, VideoSift started in February 2006, so the highest year anniversary badge is currently a 4.


Lastly, we haven't forgotten about the "original" badges - star levels. These are the most important badges on the Sift for indicating moderator abilities and general involvement with the community. We now have nifty large badge sizes of all the star ranks which will be displayed alongside all the other badges in your profile.

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This may not be all of the badges - but just a first batch. If you have some ideas for other achievements that should be noted, let us know.

I'd like to thank Chris Murphy the talented and speedy graphic artist who designed the badges. Chris has also done some work with our pals over at Neatorama. Finally, thanks as usual to my partner @lucky760 for giving Siftbot the tune-up required to make this happen.