Librarian (gold) and Research Assistant 2 (silver) - proposal

Question

Citing waffle's post from when "Research Assistant" badge was created

Looking through the data, it seemed to me that excerpts are handled fairly well by the community. I wanted to add a push to wiki editing, not excerpt editing (which is forced anyway). So... the badge counts distinct tag wikis you edit excluding excerpts."

17 months after its creation, the "Research Assistant" badge has certainly helped to improve Stack Overflow's tag wikis (103 badges awarded * 50 tag wiki edits = at least 5150 improvements made).

Yet, many tags there still do not have tag wiki or wiki excerpt. Examples of the latter:

models - 1150 questions, show - 1148 questions, alertdialog, 1070 questions, reload - 997 questions, send - 958 questions.

_{New examples (28-Nov-14):}

• define - 1162 questions.
• layer - 1047 questions.
• clear - 985 questions.
• matching - 938 questions.

_{BTW, it's odd that the "learn more" page doesn't show the wiki when it exist, but the excerpt. E.g.: see tags layer and matching. Reported this here.}

There are some broad tags where it is useful to have excerpt with:

• the tag meaning
• information about when to use the tag, and when not to use it

Tag wiki excerpts are very helpful to keep SE websites organized and new users well-informed. If SO's situation is still not perfect (comfortable, though) smaller SE sites struggle a lot to get certain resilience, with respect to this matter.

Thesis statement

Although "Research Assistant" creation was a leap of improvement to the completion of SO's tag wikis, many SO tags still don't have tag excerpts/wikis, and much less smaller SE sites (which could greatly benefit from this proposal too).

Proposal

Improve the current incentive for creation/edition of tag wikis and tag excerpts.

Note that this is a rough draft.

1. Make tag excerpts count for "Research Assistant" (silver) badge.

   Research Assistant (silver): 50 edits on tag wiki and/or tag excerpts.

2. Create a new gold badge for tag wikis

   Librarian (gold): 100 tag wikis edited (not valid for tag excerpts).

3. These (new/modified) badges should be awarded retroactively.

Tag Editor (bronze) can stay as it is.

These suggestions would further incentivize the completion and improvement of tag wiki and tag excerpts beyond what the original "Research Assistant" already does.

I am fine with the +2 reputation gain for tag edits – not suggesting any changes to that.

Answer 1

I think this would be very helpful and definitely give a greater incentive for tag wiki edits. I like that it makes tag wiki excerpts almost as valuable to edit as actual tag wikis. However, there are a couple details that I think should be changed.

First of all, if tag wiki excerpts will count for Research Assistant, they should count for Tag Editor and Librarian also. I think it's a great idea to add an incentive to edit wiki excerpts also, but it should be the same for all badges.

Second of all, 100 tag wiki edits seems a little low for a gold badge. I'm thinking around around 300-500 would be better for a gold badge.