Unsung Hero and Tenacious are (may be) a contemptuous signs. Can we eliminate conditions of it's appearing?

Question

Yes, I read Was the Unsung Hero a bad idea to implement? Tweak the definition of Unsung Hero and Tenacious Badges, I know my question is not exact duplicate, (and some others) with their answers and first sentence from this answer

Badges should encourage behaviour

and later, sentence

this badge requires that not only do I help the questions with no answers and low-views, but that I don't help others

which I (BTW) consider rude, offensive and false statement and even if

badge is a goal and not a medal

is true, it doesn't adds value for badge and increases motivation of "awarded".

Contrary to all (most?) other badges these two badges aren't sign of my activity and hard work, it's a sign of others inactivity, laziness and ignorance, which I can't change in any way. Why you award me for not-my-fault?! In devinb's translation of status of this badge it become just insulting badge

Idea: Maybe non-revokable +1 from OP on accepting answer may solve all problems in one hit, if even OP doesn't care say "Thank you" in SE-style, but accept (use) results of my work

I'm open to other ideas of implementations of closing issues of appearing these two badges at all. But anyway, hear my voice: these badges are at least: useless, as a maximum are: offensive and counterproductive

Answer 1

Contrary to all (most?) other badges these two badges aren't sign of my activity and hard work, it's a sign of others inactivity, laziness and ignorance, which I can't change in any way. Why you award me for not-my-fault?!

Sorry to be harsh, but this is just you being pessimistic and cynical. Trust me, I know, because I'm a pessimist myself (not so much a cynic, though).

But anyway, hear my voice: these badges are at least: useless, as a maximum are: offensive and counterproductive

Well, here are the definitions of "tenacious" and "unsung hero":

tenacious
not easily discouraged

unsung hero
a person who makes substantial contributions but gets little recognition for them

Now tell me: do these offend you? The definition of "unsung hero" may sound dismissive, but the word "hero" makes up for it. I don't find that insulting in any way.

Most badges are indeed goals for you to work towards. However, some badges exist as consolation prizes; indeed, hear this: some of the contributions you make will go unnoticed because of how busy our site is (Stack Overflow, at least). These badges serve to tell you, "since the community isn't rewarding you for your efforts, let us, the system, help!" And what better way to do so, than to display these badges prominently in the Recent Badges section as they get handed out, as well as in the awardees' profile pages?

These badges don't require you to not participate in high-traffic regions. You can restrict yourself if you like, but are you going to work towards a consolation prize? I don't think that's the purpose of these badges. They're meant for, should I say, a special group of users who specialize in lesser-known topics of the site. No matter how you look at these users or the topics they participate in, these users are the unsung heroes of our community (per the above definition!), and they deserve to be rewarded for them, even if in a different way from, well, the rest of us.

FWIW, if you want something more... crude... see Tumbleweed.

Answer 2

I think that you aren't really adding anything that wasn't discussed in the answers you linked to.

Contrary to all (most?) other badges these two badges aren't sign of my activity and hard work, it's a sign of others inactivity, laziness and ignorance, which I can't change in any way. Why you award me for not-my-fault?!

I think this statement is false- (I have this badge on SO) and on the most part it was because the OP had a question which was beyond the realms of "use jquery"...Some questions cannot be answered without the OP perhaps retrieving more information (improving the post, adding code or configuration) which does not indicate inactivity or lazyess...but indicates work in progress- this is usually a question with far less lazyness than most.

Edit

useless (in context) nonsense

Your idea is just totally useless. The only reason you want to make the non-revokable +1 from the OP is to defeat this badge because you say that the OP doesn't care to say thank you despite the fact that they award 15 rep (more than an upvote). Remember, one of the main reasons for SE is to make the internet better and a giant part of this is for future viewers. Upvotes largely should come from these people who find the post down the track and it helped them. Seeing a +1 and Accept will eventually be as useful as seeing +0 and accept...Surely there are better things to figure out than this.

Answer 3

I think it's a sort of compensation for not getting rep for good answers. Somewhere on MSO I read that badges are both rewards and compensations--that's why there's the "disciplined" badge as well.

I was confused when I got "Unsung Hero" on Physics, but @DavidZaslavsky explained it pretty well

The relevant part of his comments copied out here:

More like your answers tend to be underappreciated. At least that's the intent. Realistically it means the people who accepted your answers didn't realize that they could (usually, should) also upvote them, so there's a bit of luck involved

Also, my comment-- which makes it no longer a "not-my-fault" badge:

I guess it happens whenever you answer a question fast enough that the OP is still online and just accepts it(w/o upvotes). The community largely tends to ignore accepted questions, i guess.

^I'd been doing that a lot, jumping the gun on the answer at that time :)

Answer 4

Don't know if this is your case but to me, both badges I received felt as appreciation of answering in low activity tags.

Zero score answers in these tags are norm because of, well, because of low activity in these tags.

As for relatively high rate of accepted answers without upvotes, it also looks natural to me. In higher activity tags this might be not the case, first because there are more chances to get an upvote from someone else and second, because it is easier for newcomers to learn about upvotes by looking at how others upvote answers to their questions.

Also, having answer upvoted by someone else helps inexperienced asker decide to cast their own upvote; I can easily imagine them holding off upvote simply because they don't know if it's appropriate and because nobody else shows an example that it is.

Answer 5

I totally support your suggestion

This badges seem at least useless (or even harmful) for me for every StackExchange site and even for low activity tags. Reasons

• Most user will upvote your answer before/after accepting it except for users with reputation less than 15.

• In some cases these badges encourage you to answer low quality answers.

• These badges negate good deed when user received 15 reputation and came back to your answer to upvote.

• These badge encourage to answer only OPs with less than 15 reputation points (and skip questions for OP with more than 15 points regardless of question) to reduce change getting upvote.

• If you are answering in popular badges these badge encourage you providing short answers without any explanations and details. Or giving some hacks and workaround. And even when you find good solution these badges discourage you to post it until you haven't received this badges.

• These badges are discouraging you to upvote OPs with less than 15 points reputation because these OPs are source for you to get these badges.