Add badges to Markdown?

Question

I always found it odd that although I could compose questions and answers with tags in markdown, I can't do the same for a Great Question, Great Answer, or any other badge. I assume that this is because, outside of Meta Stack Overflow, there is no real need to reference badges? Be that as it may, would there be any interest in adding badges to Markdown?

I am envisioning a syntax similar to the one used for tags. For example,

[badge:great-question] Question score of 100 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.

or (as suggested by M. Tibbits):

[gold-badge:great-question] Question score of 100 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.

would be displayed as

Note that I am not proposing that you need to enter the badge description to display the badge, nor that the badge description will be automatically inserted. Typing [badge:great-question] (or [gold-badge:great-question]) would be sufficient to display the "Great Question" badge, which would ideally have a tooltip with the badge description and link to the badge page. (I used the badge description text in the example above only because it was easier to take a screenshot that way.)

This answer and this answer are great examples of posts that would benefit from the addition of badges to Markdown.

UPDATE: Martin Clayton has brought it to my attention that the idea of a badge creator is not a new one. Check out this post for "those that demand those elusive badges". People had some fun with this, until inevitably the site that hosted the novelty badges went down. Luckily, Kevin provided a site that still works (as of May 23, 2013). Given the popularity and utility of these badges—their use in jokes notwithstanding—wouldn't it be better to have Stack Overflow host this functionality itself rather than have users rely on an external service that will inevitably go down?

Answer 1

Most of us on the Community Team think that this feature is a neat idea, and our original justification for wanting this to be implemented was mostly for use in help centers. A syntax would allow these badges to be automatically generated based on the site, allowing the appropriate icon, as well as easier updating of the badges for International sites.

However, this is quite a complicated feature that would introduce a whole host of additional problems to our system for a very minimal gain. "It would be cool to have" simply isn't a good enough justification to counter the amount of development work something this complicated would bring, so it was ultimately declined.

We will likely revisit this again at some point in the future, but for now this is not going to be implemented.

Answer 2

I like this suggestion. I would really like to use this feature when making suggestions for new badges.

I have a few minor thoughts:

1. Don't force the syntax to only support existing badges.

   • The current markdown for tags allows for linking to tags which don't exist: excellent-suggestion-by-chris. My suspicion is that this is to minimize server load -- ie. an extra query to confirm that the tag does in fact exist.

   • However, to support any possible badges, how would the server know whether a given badge is bronze, sliver, or gold. To address this, I propose an additional markdown feature:

     [bronze-badge:unicornicopia]
     [silver-badge:meta-master]
     [gold-badge:oy]
     

   None of these would need to query the server to determine badge type and the syntax is similar to the existing: [meta-tag:feature].

2. To maximize ease of use, we could also allow the [badge:electorate] syntax and simply replace the badge color with a question mark in the preview [? electorate] (if the extra parsing to determine badge color is deemed too expensive).

3. I don't think the badge description should be auto-inserted, but rather included as a tool-tip style pop-up text.

4. To simplify implementation, why not make all badges link to the badge page. Or perhaps not link to anywhere to simply avoid the necessity of a meta specific syntax: [meta-gold-badge:mod-hammer].

Answer 3

I think this is a good idea, especially for on the meta sites and in chat.

We also have tag badges. I'd like to see them as well. My ideas for syntax:

• [tag-badge:(gold|silver|bronze)-tag-name]
• [tag-badge:(g|s|b)-tag-name]
• [badge:(gold|silver|bronze)-tag-name]
• [badge:(g|s|b)-tag-name]

Note that we can still use [badge:badge-name] for general badges, as is suggested in other answers.

g- instead of gold- might work confusing with some tags that start with g- already. Also it might work confusing to use [badge: for both general and tag badges. It's of course up to the team to decide what's most user friendly, or to choose something else, but these are my 4 cents.

Answer 4

I would suggest for the badges that come in different metals, we use the same leading syntax and change the back-end, so:

[badge:search-bronze]

though maybe there is a markdown way of stating a subcategory of something.