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The description of the new Curious badge currently reads:

Asked a good question on 5 separate days, and maintains a positive question record.

The term "good question" seems to be defined by the badge Good Question:

Question score of 25 or more.

Curious seems to use another criterion, though, as witnessed by my profile on UL (no Good Question but Curious).

Please clarify the description.

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    FWIW official definition that meant to be used for that badge is "good question is one that's open, not deleted, and has a score > 0" – gnat Jul 2 '14 at 16:19
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    There is an explanation available, but I agree that the badge description itself should be clearer. – yoozer8 Jul 2 '14 at 16:19
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    Same for Inquisitive and Socratic – 3ventic Jul 2 '14 at 16:23
  • @gnat If the OP's description is in effect, it's even worse: having a good question is not enough for the day to score, you also can't have bad ones! So it'd have to be "Asked only good questions on..." in any case. – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 16:24
  • @Raphael OP's description is incomplete, it only quotes troublesome part. Asked-only-good questions part is actually there, in the form of "and maintains a positive question record" – gnat Jul 2 '14 at 16:27
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    How appropriate is it that the user asking this question has an avatar that's taken straight from one of the covers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, whose back cover has a clearly different definition of the word curious, that is "adj. 1. strange, unexpected"? – BoltClock's a Unicorn Jul 8 '14 at 23:51
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn: Ah, now you spoilt the riddle for everybody else! :D – Raphael Jul 9 '14 at 7:39
  • Apparently, one diamond mod had spotted the misleading description a little earlier in a comment. – 299792458 Jan 19 at 14:56
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The criteria is... more complicated than original design. In order to keep the description under a paragraph or two, we purposely used vague wording. "Good question" in this context didn't mean the same thing as the "Good Question" badge.

By popular demand (and gnat's excellent suggestion) we are changing the wording to:

Asked a well-received question on X separate days, and maintained a positive question record.

Does that help?

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    Maybe something less vague like "asked a positively scored question" – mhlester Jul 2 '14 at 16:34
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    "well (or positively) received" – gnat Jul 2 '14 at 16:37
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    "Asked only well received questions on X separate days and maintains a positive question record overall." -- still vague, but no longer ambiguous. (credits @gnat). Can you link to the longer definition/explanation from the tag description? – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 16:43
  • The wording immediately confused me too. "Good question" is simply a poor choice because of its current use in other badges. – Southpaw Hare Jul 2 '14 at 16:49
  • Ad update: so you can have "bad" questions on the same day, it'll still count? – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 17:08
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    @Raphael: No. The full definition still resides at: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234259/asking-days-badges The description is intended to give the overview without getting into the weeds too much. This badge set is on the higher end of complication. – Jon Ericson♦ Jul 2 '14 at 17:11
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    I think this is the right way to go: Asked a question that has maintained a score of 1 or more on 5 separate days – Code Maverick Jul 2 '14 at 17:15
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    @JonEricson: Then please add "only"; it's costs little but clarifies that bad questions are not "allowed". – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 18:05
  • @CodeMaverick: In that phrasing, it's less clear that five questions are needed (and not one that has a good score on five days). – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 18:06
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    @Raphael - Ok, you can clarify it by: "Asked 5 questions on 5 different days that have maintained a score of 1 or more." – Code Maverick Jul 2 '14 at 18:34
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    @CodeMaverick: True, but just adds false precision: these are not all of the rules, so better remain vague. – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 19:02
  • @Raphael - You're right. I just read the full definition. There's just no way to understand what you have to do without reading that definition based on the current badge description. – Code Maverick Jul 2 '14 at 19:10
  • So you accepted my "no" answer, then went ahead and did it anyway? -.- – Lightness Races in Orbit Jul 8 '14 at 22:32
  • This is implemented now; thanks! I still think the "no bad question on these days" part should be there (see my answer) to avoid confusion, but I'll get back to you if and when we have the first inquiries. – Raphael Jul 9 '14 at 7:42
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    @ThaddeusB: Haney fixed this again. Thanks for letting us know. – Jon Ericson♦ Oct 5 '15 at 23:48
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I would rearrange this in addition to replacing "good":

On 5 separate days, asked one or more questions that were all well-received and maintains a positive question record.

This is a reasonably short way of covering that a day on which you ask both a well-received and a not well-received question does not count towards the 5.

Another possibility:

Maintains a positive question record and on 5 separate days, asked one or more questions that were all well-received.

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  • The "maintains ... record" part is left oddly dangling. Move "On 5 separate days" after "well-received"? – Raphael Jul 2 '14 at 21:22
  • I deliberately have it first – Kate Gregory Jul 2 '14 at 23:20
  • Fair enough. Note that your sentence seems to say that you have to maintain a positive question record (only) on five separate days. That is, as far as I can tell, not accurate. – Raphael Jul 3 '14 at 6:35
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    @Raphael added a different re-ordering that might address that. I actually think that since "asked" and "maintains" are different tenses that it doesn't say you have to maintain the positive record in the 5 days, but relying on subtleties doesn't always work and ambiguous badge descriptions are irritating. – Kate Gregory Jul 3 '14 at 11:06
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So that we have it as an answer:

Asked only well-received questions on X separate days, and maintains a positive question record.

Derived from the gnat-Jon Ericson-phrasing.

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In some contexts, the term "good question" means 25 upvotes. In this context, it means "upvoted question, not closed."

I suggest that we use the term "valid question" or some other term to refer to this type of "good question" for Curious and similar badges in order to avoid the confusion.

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    look at the other answer here. they're already changing it to "well-received question" – mhlester Jul 2 '14 at 17:35
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    @mhlester: I linked this question to another question that I asked, meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234966/…. A high-ranked user told me to make part of the other question an answer here, and so I did. Apparently some other people had similar ideas within minutes of each other. – Tom Au Jul 2 '14 at 18:37
  • Agreed. It was absolutely necessary to make the change. It just appears to have already been done. (Though it's anyone's guess when it'll actually be rolled out) – mhlester Jul 2 '14 at 18:39

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