When I first started with wikitree in 2011; I knew very little about the importance of sourcing; but of course as time went on, it became extremely important. I'm sure I have profiles out there that have zero sources that I have not come across yet. Some of them may have had dates before 1500; if I had not gained the pre-1700 and pre-1500 badge, I would not be able to do much with them once created other then maybe edit. If I were to have received a merge request and could not complete the merge...it would have been very frustrating and I may have lost interest in wikitree. I think Robin's proposal is a valid one, but there needs to be some kind of pop-up to a new user if a birth or death date typed in will cause limited use of the profile in the future; providing a link for the user to understand what that means (badges; importance of sourcing; limitations etc)
After all we are ALL here because we share the same desire to create a record of our ancestors and build a family tree. Not everyone is as passionate about it as others or as good at locating credible sources, or have limited time to work on profiles. The frustration we feel when blocked from completing a merge because of the limits of another PM is real; we have all experienced it. Or if merged not cleaned up, comments not read, info deleted etc)
I guess my point is....we absolutely need a better way to resolve the limitations of a PM, to complete merges, weed out the crap, etc without forgetting we were all New once, ..finding communication tools/pop-ups/information that an un-badged user sees such as a pop-up, if a date entered is pre- 1700 or pre-1500; alerting them once created, they will have limited rights unless they have the badges;provide a link to page that discusses importance of limitations and why, solutions (badges etc).