In my opinion everyone should be able to give out medals, maybe once a month or something and at most one per other player (ever), with a minimum time in game before they can give out any. Some limits are good, but I don't care for the fact that you have to essentially be nominated by other players before being able to give out medals yourself. It makes it a closed system.
Yes, it
is a closed system. That is absolutely deliberate and intended.
It prevents members of OOC cliques from loading each other up with medals so as to look more trustworthy, and ensures that medals flow, by and large,
from one place: Tom.
Some of you may remember the old "trust level" system, where global trust flowed outward from Tom, and everyone could state that they trusted other players, thus generating personal and global trust levels for everyone. The medal system is partially an attempt to replace that with something a bit less...stigmatic, but it does have some of the same goals.