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Mortarboard is a badge for earning 200 rep in a single day, much like Suffrage is a badge for voting 30 times in a single day.

Whereas the progress tracker for the Suffrage badge (is there a more official name for it?) counts up to 30 and resets at the end of each day, Mortarboard only counts up to 1. You've either gotten the badge, or you haven't, essentially.

I understand that for a few badges, there's really nothing more granular to count, either you've done something or you haven't, so only counting to 1 makes sense.

Mortarboard should show a progress bar of how much rep you've gotten today over 200, just like Suffrage shows how many times you've voted today over 30 or Vox Populi shows how many times you've voted today over 40.

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  • Can't you just see it in your regular profile?
    – HDE 226868
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:23
  • @HDE226868: You can. My point is, if we're going to have this feature where you have a progress bar showing how close you are to Mortarboard, shouldn't it actually, you know, show progress? Isn't it a bug that it does not?
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:32
  • ArtofWarfare I see what you mean.
    – HDE 226868
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:32
  • @rene: See my comment that I just posted seconds before you.
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:33
  • Anyway, it is not a bug because the feature is not there ...
    – rene
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:34
  • @rene: It is a feature. Go into your profile. Click on the gear in the bottom right corner of the Badges Box (Top Middle of the Activity tab, with the desktop layout. Not sure where it appears in mobile.) If you haven't earned Mortarboard yet, it'll have a progress bar that is supposed to show you how close you are to the badge. The problem is, the progress bar never moves. It's either at 0% or 100%, never anything in between. That's the bug. If the feature worked properly, it would show you how much rep you got today over 200.
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:37
  • I see and after a day it gets reset to 0 if you didn't make it? That is...confusing...I would say.
    – rene
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:43
  • @rene no, that would make sense. If you read the description of what it is...
    – Tim
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:49
  • I re-read the description and I fail to see how it makes sense but let's blame that on me not being a native speaker.
    – rene
    Apr 18, 2015 at 18:55

2 Answers 2

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The progress bar for the Mortarboard badge counts to 1 because that is consistent with how the progress bar counts for its relatives: Epic and Legendary. Those require you to hit 200 reputation on 50 and 150 days, respectively. It doesn't make much sense to have the bronze badge do something different from the silver and gold badges.

As an aside, you can very easily find your progress for a single day by just looking at your reputation history page to see how much reputation you've earned today. There's no compelling reason to have the Mortarboard badge tracker follow this number.

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  • The compelling reason is that right now, you have a progress bar which functions as a checkbox, when there's actually a perfectly valid way it could measure values between 0% and 100%.
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 19, 2015 at 2:06
  • I understand that you think that Epic and Legendary are related and so Mortarboard should count the same thing they do, but I believe you're wrong. Epic and Legendary each basically ask you to repeatedly do Mortarboard. Epic and Legendary are like for-loop statements, while Mortarboard is the content of the for-loop. They're related, yes, but they shouldn't be dismissed as the same. Mortarboard is like its own for-loop, counting to 200. You're saying that Mortarboard is instead a loop which counts to 1, wrapped around another loop which is counting to 200, & you're monitoring that outer loop.
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 19, 2015 at 2:45
  • I think that you're just way over-thinking the badge progress bars. Do you have solutions for all the other bronze badges that only count to one?
    – animuson StaffMod
    Apr 19, 2015 at 2:54
  • I do not. Those are looking for a single atomic action. There's no way to break it up into progress. Deleting a post with two downvotes doesn't bring you any closer to deleting a post with three downvotes. Earning 180 reputation in the first 12 hours of a day however, brings you 90% of the way to earning Mortarboard. Mortarboard is not like Explainer, Altruist, Disciplined, Peer Pressure, or any of the other badges you earn for a single, atomic action.
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 19, 2015 at 3:05
  • I find it interesting that rather than acknowledging what is clearly a bug, you're trying to bring up other badges which function, as far as I can tell, as best as they can. I think you're intentionally under-thinking the badge progress bars, just to be argumentative. I see a defect, I called it out, others have verified that it is a defect (via upvotes), and you're hand waving and trying to pretend that it's not there. "Oh, that dent in my car? That's a feature."
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 19, 2015 at 3:05
  • 1
    It's not a bug. It's intended to work exactly the way it is working. You're requesting a feature be changed, and all I'm saying is it doesn't make sense. The counter for that badge family is the number of days and the increments are 1, 50, and 150.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Apr 19, 2015 at 3:09
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Yes, the progress bar only counts to one due to its other neighbors, Epic and Legendary. animuson is correct on why it is 0/1 rather than x amount of rep/200. But I believe that these two proposals could be combined into one.

Of course, we will need to keep the original way we see how close you are to getting Mortarboard, Epic, or Legendary (0/1, 0/50, 0/150). But we can have your proposal added under the day count. It could look something like this:

proposal

The day count with its bar is at the top (the original method animuson said in his answer) and the rep count for today as said bu the OP. Of course, it would look better than my example but with the two methods: day count (0 out of 1, 50 or 150) and today's rep count (amount of rep earned today out of 200 rep).

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2
  • I would accept this compromise, although having that pointless 0/1 day counter still sees silly.
    – ArtOfWarfare
    Apr 19, 2015 at 13:35
  • Well, you have to take account of x days with 200 rep out of 50 or 150 days in account of Epic and Legendary, which makes the day count less silly and more meaningful
    – Anthony Pham
    Apr 19, 2015 at 13:36

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