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I'm a Home Improvement reviewer, and spend a lot of time greeting new users using the wonderful SE-AutoReviewComments to give boilerplate encouraging comments. One of my big questions is whether they've taken the Tour; if not, I end the comment with:

And, you should probably take our tour so you'll know how best to participate here.

So, whenever a user has one or more badges, I'll check to see whether one of them is "Informed" (taken the tour).

Once in a while, though, I'll get a new user with one badge, but the profile page shows no badges. In a recent example, new user Phena Wilson Phillips has the following badge display on their profile page:

One badge, but none to display

What's up with this? Are there obscure (or perhaps non-"rare") badges that won't be displayed on a profile page? Is this some sort of server bug or time lag between badge acquisition and display? Can I be sure that this hidden badge isn't "Informed"?

Edit: in the fifty minutes since I first posted this question, the user's one badge has become visible on their profile page:

Now shows "student" badge

So, there's some time-dependent thing going on in the server. Any ideas what?

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    Classic cache issue ) – Suvitruf says Reinstate Monica Jul 19 at 12:38
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    Don't worry, someone with some boilerplate will be by with your answer shortly. – Rob Jul 19 at 13:04
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Yes, this seems to be a caching issue; no matter how often you reload a new (and affected) user's profile page, you won't see the actual badge earned (until some timer expires, which can take a number of minutes, which is forever when you're trying to cruise through the reviews).

I have, however, found a workaround:

  1. Go to the user's network profile
  2. Click the "activity" tab
  3. Look at the history; you'll see the badge being awarded, and its type.

So, here's hoping SE fixes this, but there's a way around it.

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    Nothing to fix, it's a server side cache used to make the profile page load faster. Those few who really want "real time" data can use the workaround you suggested. – Shadow The Princess Wizard Jul 24 at 6:37

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