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I've just been awarded the Vox Populi badge on Meta Stack Overflow, Stack Overflow, Gaming & WordPress. I don't think I've voted once today, let alone 40 times on each site.

Reports indicate that this is affecting all of the voting-related badges, including Vox Populi, Civic Duty, and Electorate.

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15
  • 41
    It happened to me too.
    – simchona
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:24
  • 1
    I was awarded this on Meta Super User and MSO, despite using only 30 votes this entire month on either site.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:24
  • Looks like a whole bunch of people just earned it (including me)
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:25
  • Can one check on the votes you have casted?
    – ziggystar
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:26
  • @ziggystar Yeah its on bottom right of the summary of your profile page. For example you've had 3 this week and 26 this month on SO
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:27
  • I actually thought I earned it a long time ago but it didn't show up; I figured it was playing catchup--perhaps not.
    – Dave Newton
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:27
  • 11
    Presumably a consequence of this. Definitely a bug, I got it on sites where I know I haven't voted on that many deleted posts and I don't even have the Suffrage badge.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:29
  • 1
    I'm calling badge catch-up job with the added twist of a new cartesian product bug. Vegas has the odds at 5:2
    – Anthony Pegram
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:30
  • 5
    I'm keeping it, you can pluck it from my cold lifeless hand when I am lying in my grave. But then ask yourself - would you seize back a mere piece of bronze from a dead man?
    – slugster
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:37
  • 1
    It's on other meta's too. See meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/q/827/759
    – Double AA
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:38
  • 5
    I see my name and part of my species in the freehand circle. I have been immortalized.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:38
  • @animuson: Looks fine to me...
    – H.B.
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:40
  • 9
    It's meta madness.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:49
  • 4
    This is especially disconcerting because it implies activity on your account that you know you did not yourself perform. (Which of course makes the user feel like their account was compromised, which in turn implies that StackOverflow itself is insecure in some way.) Obviously this is a pretty devastating bug for those it affects. Not all users will know to come here to find out about it.
    – livingtech
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:51
  • 1
    @livingtech Yeah, that was my main concern too.
    – John H
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:53

1 Answer 1

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39

We just deployed a change that affects the voting badges. This is why you see a number of these badges being awarded.

For more information about this change, you can see this answer.

Note that there is a bug with Vox Populi only that is awarding too many of them, beyond the expected more for retroactive awards, and a fix is being deployed now. The erroneous awards there will be cleaned up shortly.

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16
  • The other two are fine, aren't they? As their required votes are accumulative over any time span.
    – H.B.
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:42
  • 3
    Can we keep them for posterity?
    – sudo rm -rf
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:43
  • @H.B. yes, Electorate and Civic Duty are correct.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:44
  • 14
    Can you run the same "bug" on the Legendary badge?
    – LarsTech
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:47
  • 7
    This was my screw up, sorry guys! The badges will be fixed (and revoked where needed) in just a moment.
    – Nick Craver
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:49
  • 1
    Wow that got fixed quick, it's already gone.
    – Ben Brocka
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:50
  • 1
    Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit...
    – Richard Inglis
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:51
  • 4
    29648 awarded down to 2497 awarded.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:52
  • 1
    Just FYI: while you fixed the mis-awarded badge, I still received the pop-up saying I'd earned the Vox Populi badge (even though I hadn't earned it, and you had already cleaned up the mis-award).
    – Michael Kohne
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:58
  • 8
    Nothing like real-time accountability with several thousand users to keep you on the edge of your seat. Not sure I'm envying any of the SE devs.
    – Cody Gray
    Feb 22, 2012 at 22:58
  • @MichaelKohne yup, step 1 was stopping the badge being awarded. step 2 is the notifications.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Feb 22, 2012 at 23:03
  • 2497 awarded up to 2682 awarded. That looks better.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Feb 22, 2012 at 23:06
  • @MichaelKohne notifications should be gone now.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    Feb 22, 2012 at 23:07
  • 1
    Everything looks fine on Stack Overflow, but I still see an erroneous badge notification on my stackexchange.com user profile.
    – Steve Tjoa
    Feb 22, 2012 at 23:27
  • 1
    @SteveTjoa - that's the aggregator, the reason that wasn't addressed is a) it's really hard, and b) that's getting a full backfill very soon, so it'll be corrected then (as part of fixing other aggregation hiccups this week)
    – Nick Craver
    Feb 23, 2012 at 10:43

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