Context. GitHub has introduced a new gamification element through personal achievements, whereby badges are unlocked and displayed on developers' personal profile pages in recognition of their development activities. Objective. In this paper, we present an exploratory analysis using mixed methods to study the diffusion of personal badges in GitHub, in addition to the effects and reactions to their introduction. Method. First, we conduct an observational study by mining longitudinal data from more than 6,000 developers and performed correlation and regression analysis. Then, we conduct a survey and analyze over 300 GitHub community discussions on the topic of personal badges to gauge how the community responded to the introduction of the new feature. Results. We find that most of the developers sampled own at least a badge, but we also observe an increasing number of users who choose to keep their profile private and opt out of displaying badges. Besides, badges are generally poorly correlated with developers' qualities and dispositions such as timeliness and desire to collaborate. We also find that, except for the Starstruck badge (reflecting the number of followers), their introduction does not have an effect. Finally, the reaction of the community has been in general mixed, as developers find them appealing in principle but without a clear purpose and hardly reflecting their abilities in the current form. Conclusions. We provide recommendations to GitHub platform designers on how to improve the current implementation of personal badges as both a gamification mechanism and as sources of reliable cues of ability for developers' assessment

翻译：背景。GitHub通过个人成就引入了新的游戏化元素，即根据开发者的开发活动解锁徽章并展示在其个人资料页面。目标。本文采用混合方法进行探索性分析，研究个人徽章在GitHub中的扩散情况，以及其引入带来的影响和社区反应。方法。首先，我们通过对6000余名开发者的纵向数据进行挖掘，开展观察性研究并进行相关性与回归分析。随后，我们开展问卷调查并分析超过300篇GitHub社区关于个人徽章的讨论，以评估社区对这一新功能的反应。结果。我们发现大多数抽样开发者至少拥有一枚徽章，但也观察到越来越多用户选择保持资料私密并退出徽章展示。此外，徽章与开发者的及时性、协作意愿等品质及倾向普遍相关性较弱。研究还表明，除反映关注者数量的"Starstruck"徽章外，其他徽章的引入并未产生显著影响。最后，社区反应总体呈现分化态势：开发者原则上认可徽章的吸引力，但认为其缺乏明确目的，且现有形式难以真实反映个人能力。结论。我们为GitHub平台设计者提供改进建议，旨在优化个人徽章作为游戏化机制的设计，并使其成为开发者能力评估的可靠依据。