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I wanted to suggest three new badges:

  • HATER: If you've downvoted any one person more than 20 times.
  • LOVER: If you've upvoted any one person more than 20 times.
  • FAIR AND BALANCED: If you've upvoted AND downvoted one person more 20 times UP and DOWN.

What do you think? Then we would finally know what type of people we have on Stack Overflow.

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14
  • 41
    Disregarding any implications of the "encouragement" the badges offer, you do realize that it is not difficult at all for most people to get all 3 badges and therefore thwart your intent on highlighting the different classes of people, aye?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:17
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    @Grace, No, because you can get them more than once. So you could still be a HATER three times, and a LOVER only once, and still not be FAIR AND BALANCED
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:19
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    +1 great idea - I think you should get Exp for earning the LOVER badge, and lose Exp for getting the HATER badge.
    – jjnguy
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:24
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    Someone's been watching too much Fox News.
    – Ether
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:46
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    @Ether: We need to do a penetrating expose of the people on SO to find out if they are pro-unicorn or anti-unicorn.
    – gnostradamus
    Jul 28, 2010 at 17:42
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    Badges are intended to encourage desirable behavior. What desirable behavior do these badges encourage?
    – user27414
    Jul 28, 2010 at 18:32
  • They encourage involvement by presenting a visual indicator of fun statistics, this clearly has value and it is the badge's raison d'être
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 28, 2010 at 19:11
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    That could be said about nearly anything. They don't appear to specifically encourage any kind of desirable behavior.
    – user27414
    Jul 28, 2010 at 19:13
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    Neither do Tax Refunds.
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 28, 2010 at 19:14
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    Yeah, that made a lot of sense.
    – user27414
    Jul 28, 2010 at 19:15
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    @Lord.Quackstar, look how much "reputation" I've got since you made the comment. And, I haven't changed a thing. See, the swarms of people that would have the HATER badge have dwindled and a new group of unbiased non-partisans have come to see what the suggestion was about.
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 30, 2010 at 16:08
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    I think these badges encourage serial voting. Votes toward these badges would be reversed, at which point the badge is removed. Therefore, a person who wants such a badge would keep serially voting others.
    – user215114
    Oct 17, 2013 at 20:22
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    possible duplicate of What is serial voting and how does it affect me?
    – user215114
    Oct 17, 2013 at 20:27
  • Why would we add a badge designed to encourage serial voting?
    – user16217248
    Nov 27 at 2:59

4 Answers 4

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141

You should vote on a post, not a person. If you vote based on the person, you're doing it wrong. And we don't want badges encouraging people to do it wrong.

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  • 2
    I'm not suggesting people vote on a person. I'm suggesting we give a badge as an indicator of the way people vote.
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:26
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    And what will these badges indicate to us? Absolutely nothing. I know that I upvote certain people a lot just because I'm active in a niche tag with them and they post many useful answers, not because I have a super nice personality or I'm obsessed with them or I'm a sock-puppet of theirs (quick sideways glances).
    – gnostradamus
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:29
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    Enough with the sock puppet hate!
    – Pauska Sock
    Mar 29, 2012 at 20:29
38

The badge system is designed to promote desired behavior within the system and I do not believe encouraging users (implicitly or explicitly) to think about who they are voting for should be done in any way. Voting should be based on the quality of the question or answer being voted on.

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5
  • Don't think about it, if you get the LOVER that's just good.. If you get the HATER that's just bad... They're just visual indicators of the personality.
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:28
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    The badge system is not intended to provide visual indicators of the person's personality, it is to encourage desired behavior in the system.
    – Timothy Carter
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:30
  • What about the old woot badge? It was ment to encourage desired behavoir in the system about users that used woot.com?
    – Evan Carroll
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:41
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    The "Woot" badge was actually just the Enthusiast badge in an advertising disguise. Enthusiast encourages visiting the site, Woot was simply sponsoring it for a short period.
    – gnostradamus
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:56
  • Unfortunately, some people downvote for the smallest reasons. -1 looks disgusting. How good your rating is depends on who is browsing the forum at that moment. If you're unlucky, you get caught by voting sadists.
    – neverMind9
    Jul 10, 2018 at 9:18
9

None of those badges should be added because it undermines what it means to upvote or downvote.

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3

I sat down and thought about this for a bit, and decided that it wouldn't really add or detract anything. Over time (as this thread is 2 years old), you would likely upvote or downvote any given user enough times to earn all three badges. At first I thought it might discourage serial downvoting, but then it kind of makes sense if someone posts a lot that eventually you might upvote 20 of their posts and downvote another 20. That wouldn't necessarily make you a LOVER, a HATER or FAIR & BALANCED, it's just natural that over an extended period of time that you would eventually earn all of those badges.

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7
  • Out of curiosity, what's the point of responding to this? The question is three years old, and is clearly status-declined.
    – LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir
    Sep 11, 2013 at 20:00
  • @LBT - Someone recently serial-downvoted Evan, as was pointed out in his answer in this thread: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/196634/…. It led me here, and I didn't even realize it was an old question until after I answered it. I don't always look at dates. It DID get me a few HATERS, though! :o)
    – Johnny Bones
    Sep 11, 2013 at 20:25
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    He didn't get serially-downvoted, he got downvoted by a boatload of people because he's a known troll who does obnoxious things like calling repuation "experience", coming up with crackpot conspiracy theories, has been repeatedly comment- and question-banned yet somehow manages to stay unsuspended.
    – LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir
    Sep 11, 2013 at 20:27
  • Oh. Hmmpf. His answers don't really seem all that "troll-like", although admittedly I didn't read everything he's posted. I'm still perplexed that my answer, which I thought was well thought out and makes perfect sense, received 3 downvotes so far. @shrugs@
    – Johnny Bones
    Sep 11, 2013 at 20:30
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    @JohnnyBones Guilty by association! These are the kinds of people who would throw the baby out and save the bathwater to drown more babies in.
    – Evan Carroll
    Sep 11, 2013 at 21:08
  • @EvanCarroll - You actually referred to reputation as (@gasp@) "experience"?!? Sweet Jesus in a burning bush, you are one evil bastage!
    – Johnny Bones
    Sep 11, 2013 at 21:16
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    @JohnnyBones Considering the vast majority of them are deleted, no, they don't look "troll-like." You're only seeing the decent ones that didn't warrant deletion.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Sep 12, 2013 at 5:45

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