Hi Maurice,
Just wanted to clarify some things:
1. When you archive badges, they are removed from management pages and are not being awarded to users any more.
2. If an archived badge was earned by a user earlier, it will still be available on users My Badges page.
3. Marking badge private/public affects only user Profile page, not My Badges page.
4. "My Latest Badges" shows to a user the badges that they earned recently and it shows ALL of the badges regardless of their privacy setting as only a badge owner can see them.
5. Online backpack badges and local badges are two separate things. When you remove a badge from Mozilla backpack, it doesn't mean that the local badge (page section 'My badges from SITENAME website') with the same name will be removed as well. Removing badge from Mozilla backpack just means that it won't be in the list of external badges (page section 'My badges from other web sites').
I would not recommend removing badges from database directly as there are files and records associated with badges that might be difficult to clean up manually.
Yuliya