Badges should reward positive behavior

Question

I've been doing a bit of badge hunting recently.

I was under the impression that badges were supposed to incentivize positive behaviour. The tag wiki for badges even says so.

Badges are awarded to encourage and incentivize positive community actions within the site.

Most do just this (e.g. Great Answer, Booster, Teacher etc.). Some badges are just incidentally rewarded after doing something trivial (e.g. Critic). These types of badges are fine.

But then there are some badges that reward unconstructive behavior. Here's a few that I have, with an explanation of how I got them:

• Tumbleweed
  Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week
  
  This one was pretty easy. All I had to do was post a nonsense question that people are likely to ignore. (at the time the badge was rewarded, it had 0 votes, answers, comments, and 21 views.) This badge encouraged me to post pure noise.

• Peer Pressure
  Deleted own post with score of -3 or lower
  
  This one was incredibly easy, as well as perversely fun. All I needed to do was answer a C++ question with something along the lines of

  C++ is an ugly language with all sorts of platform dependent behavior. Just drop whatever you're doing and use jQuery instead.

  This took a matter of seconds to accumulate three downvotes, after which I deleted the answer (getting the lost reputation back) and got the Peer Pressure badge. If this isn't a badge that promotes bad behavior, I don't know what is. This made me realize that I can freely post as much pointless and stupid content that I want with no penalty as long as I delete it later.

• Disciplined
  Deleted own post with score of 3 or higher
  
  This was pretty easy, too. I just deleted an old answer that had 3 upvotes. This badge encouraged me to remove potentially helpful content from the site.

There are a few more badges that seem to encourage less-than-helpful behavior (Vox Populi, Strunk & White, Taxonomist) but I don't really feel qualified to elaborate on why because I haven't obtained them nefariously (yet).

I'm not suggesting that these badges should be removed, becase, frankly, I'd like to keep them. Whenever you introduce new badges, though, I think it would be prudent to carefully consider whether or not they are constructive.

Answer 1

Generally badges serve two purposes:

• Reward the user for doing something right
• Compensate the user for losing out in some other area

Tumbleweed falls into the latter category; it's a pity badge for when the question wasn't bad (it didn't get downvoted), but the author still didn't get an answer. Unsung Hero is the same way -- we don't want people to not get upvotes, but we give them a badge if they don't get any when they clearly deserved them.

As for Peer Pressure and Disciplined, the intent is to (respectively) get people to delete a sucky post that's been downvoted, and to delete a wrong answer even if it got some upvotes. In both cases the point is to reward people for removing bad content from the site. You can earn them by intentionally putting bad content on the site and then eliminating it later, but it kind of makes you a terrible person.

Finally, as for the badges you haven't earned yet but are suspicious about (Vox Populi, Strunk & White, Taxonomist), those are also clearly to encourage good behavior (you should vote a lot, edit posts that need it, and create useful tags), but yes, if you're being actively malicious you can earn them without actually being a positive influence on the site.

Answer 2

You can't earn Tumbleweed with pure noise; that would get closed and deleted. It's generally considered an exception to the "positive behavior" rule, and is more of a consolation prize for the first time the community doesn't help you.

As for Peer Pressure and Disciplined, they both have good motivation. One teaches that you can remove bad content; the other is to encourage removing bad content even though you'll lose some precious Official Reputation Points.

Yes, you can obtain these badges nefariously, but if you really care that much about just getting the badges — and bronze ones, at that! — then I humbly suggest you need to reconsider your motivation for being here. Also, I happen to be proud of the fact that I've never qualified for Peer Pressure (except semi-intentionally on Meta).

Answer 3

I got all those badges without gaming.

There are legitimate reasons for them, and legitimate ways to earn them.

It's too bad you felt you had to have them at any price.

Answer 4

Badges are also for entertainment. Even though you get a Peer Pressure badge by purposely making a bad answer, you only get one Peer Pressure badge. After that, you sort of lose the appeal of leaving bad answers. Besides, you do have to delete your answer to get it, so the badge works.

As far as Tumbleweed is concerned-- almost everyone gets them. Same issue since you can only get it once.

Answer 5

Badges are given for incentivizing positive behaviors, but also for letting the users familiarize with a Stack Exchange site. That is the case with the badges for leaving ten comments, for having posts on the meta site with at least two votes, for flagging the first post, for having visited every section of the FAQ, for the first rollback, etc.

If you notice, for most of those badges, there is just a bronze badge; for example, you don't get a silver badge after you rolled back X posts.