13

After an initial burst of interest, which took one of my SO Questions to ~80 upvotes, a steady but slow dribble of votes over the last few weeks finally took it to the magic 100 (and a gold badge) yesterday.

What surprised me is that this seems to have suddenly reinvigorated the question. It's had over 40 more votes over the weekend, a couple more comments/answers, and a load more views.

Has anyone else observed this phenomenon, and what causes it? Does a 100-vote question suddenly get promoted as "Hot"?

1
  • 1
    I've noticed this too. People seem to upvote more conservatively when you are a bit under 100 than when you are above it.
    – mmx
    Commented Aug 10, 2009 at 9:18

2 Answers 2

5

People search for good answers. That's why gold badges exist. They pick gold badge answers - that's it!

4
  • Hmmm. The question has had a gold badge answer for several weeks, and the question topic isn't one that I would expect to come up often on searches.
    – Roddy
    Commented Aug 10, 2009 at 10:39
  • The question has a gold badge answer from Guffa, who is on the second user page from SO. People do not need to search for that question. They probably check the user accounts of the famous users. They read and upvote the highest answers. Some of them upvoted your question also. Commented Aug 10, 2009 at 11:19
  • Yes, but I'm curious about the sudden recent jump in viewing/voting which seemed to occur exactly at the point that the question (NOT the answer) received 100 votes. Obviously my gold appears in the "recent badges" list - but is that all?
    – Roddy
    Commented Aug 10, 2009 at 12:05
  • The recent gold badges list is accessed frequently, I guess. You can figure out, if or if not the votes decrease as soon as your question drops down in that list. Commented Aug 10, 2009 at 12:16
5

The best guess I have so far for this phenomenon is that the 'gold badge' lists like this one are sorted with most recent awarded badge first. So that as soon as you get the badge, you pop to the top of the page here, and stay there until someone else gets the same badge.

And, these lists are directly linked from the 'badges' page which give details of each badge.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .