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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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  • 1
    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, 2014 at 16:19
  • 6
    There is an explanation available, but I agree that the badge description itself should be clearer.
    – yoozer8
    Jul 2, 2014 at 16:19
  • 3
    Same for Inquisitive and Socratic
    – 3ventic
    Jul 2, 2014 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, 2014 at 16:24
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    @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, 2014 at 16:27
  • 1
    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, 2014 at 23:51
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn: Ah, now you spoilt the riddle for everybody else! :D
    – Raphael
    Jul 9, 2014 at 7:39
  • Apparently, one diamond mod had spotted the misleading description a little earlier in a comment.
    – 299792458
    Jan 19, 2019 at 14:56

4 Answers 4

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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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  • 10
    Maybe something less vague like "asked a positively scored question"
    – mhlester
    Jul 2, 2014 at 16:34
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    "well (or positively) received"
    – gnat
    Jul 2, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 at 16:49
  • Ad update: so you can have "bad" questions on the same day, it'll still count?
    – Raphael
    Jul 2, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 at 19:10
  • So you accepted my "no" answer, then went ahead and did it anyway? -.-
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Jul 8, 2014 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, 2014 at 7:42
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    @ThaddeusB: Haney fixed this again. Thanks for letting us know.
    – Jon Ericson
    Oct 5, 2015 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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4
  • The "maintains ... record" part is left oddly dangling. Move "On 5 separate days" after "well-received"?
    – Raphael
    Jul 2, 2014 at 21:22
  • I deliberately have it first
    – Kate Gregory
    Jul 2, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 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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0

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, 2014 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, 2014 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, 2014 at 18:39

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