Look, I know comments are ephemeral and all that, but still… could I have a badge for this, please?!
As Yakk suggests:
"Nice Post-It!" Badge needed: Comment with 5x more upvotes than votes on the post it is attached to, and at least 20 votes on the post it is attached to.
Ta :)
Not surprisingly, I think this is a good idea.
I think it is fun, harmless, and even beneficial.
The bar I sketched -- 5x more upvotes than the attached content has votes, and at least 20 votes on the attached content -- is probably too high a bar.
It uses votes on the attached content (not upvotes), which makes it work well on both horrible and good content.
The multiplier means that people reading the content found the comment far more interesting than they found the attached content. The threshold requires that the source content be interesting, so worth comparing with. A multiplier instead of an absolute threshold prevents over-popular attached content from making this too easy.
On second thought, a 4x threshold and at least 10 votes on the attached content (question or answer) would probably make it reasonably rare. Really, it should depend on how rare such an event is, to keep it from being either an impossible or overly-easy achievement.
The name of it -- "Nice Post-It!" -- refers to the fact that comments are "post-its" in the antediluvian meta thread defining "How do comments work".
As comments are indeed second class content, making it a tier lower than its rareness would indicate is probably good. Ie, make it a silver badge (if tuned to be very rare), or a bronze badge (if tuned to be moderately rare). By avoiding making it a gold badge, we should prevent badge-chasers from being a problem. Note that we already have a number of comment badges, such as pundit (get 5 comments voted up to +5).
It is fun, because learning that your comment got way more attention than the thing it is attached to is a moment of awesome.
It is harmless, because if set to a modest level (silver, say), only the quirkiest badge-hunters will go for it. And as it requires coordination of dozens of hundreds of independent people to give it to you, there is not much someone can do to get it.
It is marginally beneficial, in that it gives a very small reward to those who give comments that many people like, which makes the contributor and apparently a large percentage of those read it feel good about website visit.
Comments are second class content here - as you know comments are liable to be removed at a drop of a hat, they are ephemeral and should not be considered to have any permanence or importance.
As such - adding badges will only cause comments to be "gamed" for it and encourage more commenting rather than less.
In fact - comments like the one you have posted as an example should be flagged as too chatty and removed.
