I think they're meaningless unless you get them organically, without farming and flame baiting.
For instance, I've seen a few threads which appear to be farming for a 'Hot Topic' or 'On Fire' badge, they usually consist of an attention grabbing title, then a link to a news story about a brutal murder or child rape, with a single sentence underneath the link like "I think this is bad, what do you think should be done with the killer?"
The sensationalist title and controversial story is guaranteed to get a lot of people viewing and commenting on the thread... and as sure as Bob's you're uncle, a day later the OP has got a new badge for trawling a gutter news site and pasting a link.
Inane and banal list threads are another easy and transparent way of farming for badges, such as asking a question like "Where do you live?" or "How old are you?". You know eveyone is bound to live somewhere, or be of some age, so those types of threads will get a lot of views and replies without generating much discussion or requiring much effort, from both the author and people who reply.
Badge farming like that is similar to those cold and warm reading technique that "psychic" scam artists employ, but with less talent and integrity.
Just because the badge is called 'Excellent Topic', it doesn't necessarily mean the topic you got it for was excellent, or even good.
I was reading the Eve Online forum over at Warcry the other day, and saw quite a few posts which had been struck with the Ban Hammer, low content irrelevant posts which were an obvious attempt to get the 'Forum Vagabond' badge, it did make me chuckle.
