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There are many questions on Meta resulting from folks thinking that they have earned the Yearling Badge. One source of confusion is that the profile will show that a user has been a member for a year even though the user is several days short of meeting the full year of membership.

I understand that the user can simply mouse-over that field and see the actual date. However, because that text is not in an anchor tag, it is not obvious to some users that this behavior exists.

I would like to recommend that the following changes be considered:

  1. Make the text for the "member for" field an anchor tag so that users can more easily recognize the mouse-over behavior.
  2. Do not change the "member for" text to read "1 year" until that milestone has actually been reached.
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    I'm sure the second point has been raised before, but I can't find it right now
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 14:30
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    There are multiple questions about "12 months". @ChrisF I'm guessing the one you're thinking of is Member for 12 months?. I feel like we get a lot fewer Yearling-related questions than we used to these days. Have there been a bunch recently that I've missed?
    – Pops
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 14:44
  • @PopularDemand - thems dur bunnies
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 14:52

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If a person has been on the site for nearly a year and sees in their profile that they have been "a member for 1 year" and have no Yearling Badge, there are a couple of possible outcomes (in order of likelihood from least to greatest):

  1. They will get mad and quit using SO forever.
  2. They will get frustrated and search Meta (perhaps for the first time) and find an answer that, while correct, likely brings them very little joy.
  3. They will be curious, search for the issue on Meta and become even more curious why this issue keeps popping up periodically. They will discover the history of this issue and get a glimpse into the mind of SO as a community, evolving to improve itself over the months and years. This glimpse will inspire them to make SO a better place, a portal to true human connectedness that is so often replaced by mindless digital rants of circumstance and mere acquaintance. They will find true peace.
  4. They will check again in a week or two, and the badge will be there.
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    5. They've never heard of the Yearling Badge in the first place.
    – John
    Commented Jan 10, 2014 at 14:25

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