PH should just let site owners add a meta tag asking to not be "hunted" (a la Pinterest "nopin")... the whole badge thing sounds like a free marketing campaign for PH.
HAHA, Interesting point! I hadn't thought of it as a marketing campaign for them...not sure that they need much marketing :) But I did originally want a more high tech option than just badges. Incidentally, I started to just like the idea of badges as a public commitment to build hunt-worthy products.
Also...I'm not gonna lie...I REALLY like saying the word 'BADGES.'
This idea seems extremely self serving to whomever the author of the post and the badges as I imagine only ends up making a site look extremely ugly. If you don't feel the site is ready for PH, indicate so on the site I guess but this whole needing to put a badge up and attribute credit... Talk about stupid. I mean what value does it really serve that a site owner can't do themselves that would require attribution for something like this.
Those are all valid points. I'm definitely not a designer or a developer. The goal was more to create something myself, using tools that I'd mostly found on Product Hunt, and just get it out there: more of a doodle than a work of art :) I haven't had much to do with HTML since my 1998 Smashing Pumpkins Angelfire tribute page (imagine lots of Billy Corgan and glitter GIFs). This was a good refresher trying to get Tumblr and SquareSpace to do the fidgety things I wanted. I'm also a big fan of Product Hunt and thought it would make for a quirky homage to what they're trying to create. Is it useful? Dunno. Did it make a couple of people smile? I hope so. That was as far as I got in the planning. Don't get me wrong, I love self-serving as much as the next person, but my intention was certainly not to offend. Thanks for taking the time to give feedback, I hope the backstory is somewhat insightful.