You took a picture!
I think I'm going to start a "You Took a Picture!" badge award for Flickr. I'll start the "Pictures" group go to with it. The rules for posting to the group will be "You must have taken the picture to submit it to the group. For every picture you submit, you must award the 'You Took a Picture!' badge to every photo you view."
It's just as meaningful as any other award, isn't it? When ordinary snapshots get ten awards in the first day they're up, it's obvious that the awards don't mean anything at all. I see photos that I would be embarrassed to post in my public photostream, let alone submit to a group, getting all kinds of awards.
This mutual back-patting for simply having taken a picture isn't helping anybody improve their work. One photographer I know who has only been shooting for awhile does some really great stuff... but the good stuff and the snapshots get nearly equal praise, because this photog submits every photo to over 100 groups and gets showered with meaningless "awards" every time.