The Badge They Say Doesn't Matter

Self-Reported Weight Versus Revealed Win Rate in a Giveaway Group's Contested Claims

A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement surveys 42 volunteer approvers across nine neighbourhood giveaway groups on how much a member's good-karma badge shapes a contested claim, then checks the answer against 118 contested three-way threads from the same groups. Self-reported reliance on the badge averages 17%; the higher-badge claimant's revealed win rate averages 70%, a gap that holds across item category, approver tenure, and how prominently a group displays the badge.

@misc{slop_84ezbm,
  author       = {Solveig Adeyemi and Casimir Beng},
  title        = {The Badge They Say Doesn't Matter: Self-Reported Weight Versus Revealed Win Rate in a Giveaway Group's Contested Claims},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.84ezbm},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-a-neighbourhood-giveaway-84ezbm/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}