List of all badges with full descriptions

Question

• What are badge name's requirements?
• Why didn't I get badge name (right now)?
• Which badges can I earn multiple times?

Jump to:

• Question Badges
• Answer Badges
• Participation Badges
• Tag Badges
• Moderation Badges

• Other Badges

• Area 51 Badges

• Documentation Badges (Stack Overflow)

Note: Some badges are awarded based on score. The term score means the total number of upvotes minus the total number of downvotes.

Return to FAQ index

Visit the Badges section of the Help Center on any site to see a complete list of badges that you can filter by earned, unearned, or type.

Answer 1

Question Badges

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Altruist

• bronze; awarded once

• First bounty you manually awarded on another person’s question

  • Manually awarding means manually selecting a bounty winner; letting the system auto-award half the bounty does not count (source).
• Not awarded on per-site metas, since those sites do not have bounties.

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Benefactor

• bronze; awarded once

• Award a bounty on your own question

  • Manually awarding means manually selecting a bounty winner; letting the system auto-award half the bounty does not count (source); letting the system auto-award the full bounty to an accepted answer does not count either.
• Not awarded on per-site metas, since those sites do not have bounties.

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Curious

• bronze; awarded once
• Asked a well-received question on 5 separate days, and maintained a positive question record

Inquisitive

• silver; awarded once
• Asked a well-received question on 30 separate days, and maintained a positive question record

Socratic

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Asked a well-received question on 100 separate days, and maintained a positive question record

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• Any open question that is not deleted and has a score >= 1 is considered well-received
• Only days where all questions asked have been well-received, count (source)
• A positive question record means you don't have too many closed, downvoted or deleted questions, overall. The formula is (total questions - negative questions - closed - deleted)/total questions ≥ 0.5. Questions that have been downvoted and closed and deleted count three times in this calculation!

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Favorite Question

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Have a question listed as a favorite by 25 users

Stellar Question

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Have a question listed as a favorite by 100 users

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Investor

• bronze; awarded once
• Offer a bounty on another user's question
• Not awarded on per-site metas, since those sites do not have bounties

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Nice Question

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 10 on one question

Good Question

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 25 on one question

Great Question

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 100 on one question

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Popular Question

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Receive 1000 views on one question

Notable Question

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Receive 2500 views on one question

Famous Question

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Receive 10,000 views on one question

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Promoter

• bronze; awarded once
• Offer a bounty on your own question
• Not awarded on per-site metas, since those sites do not have bounties

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Scholar

• bronze; awarded once
• Accept an answer

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Student

• bronze; awarded once
• Receive a score of one on a question

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Tumbleweed

• bronze; awarded once
• Ask a question that after its first week of existence has score of 0, no answers, no comments and no more than 60 views.
• The purpose explained in What is the purpose of the tumbleweed badge?

Answer 2

Answer Badges

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Enlightened

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Be the first person to answer a question, and receive a score of at least ten for that answer. The answer must be accepted by the question owner, and it mustn't be a self-accept.

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Explainer

• bronze; awarded once
• Edit 1 question within 12 hours of answering it

Refiner

• silver; awarded once
• Edit 50 questions each within 12 hours of answering it (score>0).

Illuminator

• gold; awarded once
• Edit 500 questions each within 12 hours of answering it (score>0).

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• Answers must have a score of 1 or greater.
• Self-answers don't count.
• Only body and title edits on the question count, tag-only edits do not.
• The question must remain open.

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Generalist

• silver; awarded once
• Earn a tag score of 15 on one of the top 40 tags, then repeat the previous step until any 20 of the top 40 tags are covered (source) (confirmation)
• Only awarded to anyone after each of the 40 top tags has over 200 questions (confirmation)

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Guru

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 40 on an answer to a question you did not ask, and earn the accepted checkmark for that same answer (source)
• Community wiki answers are eligible for this badge (source)

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Nice Answer

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 10 on one answer

Good Answer

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 25 on one answer

Great Answer

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Earn a score of 100 on one answer

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Populist

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Provide an answer that meets all of the following criteria (source):
  • it is the highest scoring answer on the question (source)
  • it does not have the accepted checkmark
  • it has a score of 23 or more
  • it has at least one vote more than double the score of the accepted answer
  • the accepted answer has a score of 11 or more
  • it is not an answer to your own question (source)

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Reversal

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Answer a question that has a score of negative five or lower and receive a score of at least 20 on the answer

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Revival

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Provide an answer to a question that is at least 30 days old at the time of answering.
• Your answer reaches a score of two.
• No other answers posted earlier than your answer have a score of two. "Earlier" refers to the time the answer was originally posted (first revision).

Necromancer

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Receive a score of five for an answer posted at least 60 days after the question it answers

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Self-Learner

• bronze; awarded once
• Provide an answer with a score of 3 or more to your own question
• Works on community wiki answers

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Teacher

• bronze; awarded once
• Receive a score of one on an answer

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Tenacious

• silver; awarded once
• Have more than five accepted answers with a score of zero, and have those zero-score accepted answers account for at least 20% of all your accepted answers
• Was originally named Tireless.

Unsung Hero

• gold; awarded once
• Have more than ten accepted answers with a score of zero, and have those zero-score accepted answers account for at least 25% of all your accepted answers

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• Only accepted answers at least ten days old are considered (source)
• Community wiki answers, deleted answers, and self-accepted answers are not included in any calculations
• How long do Tenacious and Unsung Hero badges take to be awarded? - an SE team member who checked the source code in chat

Answer 3

Tag Badges

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What are tag badges?

Users may earn badges on any site for positive contributions to established tags used on that site. Each tag badge has the same name as the tag for which it was awarded.

When a user meets the requirements for a tag badge that has never been awarded, the system creates and awards it automatically. These badges are displayed with a white background, unlike other badges that are displayed with a black background.

Following information copied from waffles♦'s answer here:

• Tag badges that are no longer applicable are revoked, unlike "regular" badges.
• A tag must appear on a minimum of 100 questions to be considered for tag badges.

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What is a tag score?

A tag score is basically the combined total of all the upvotes (+1) and downvotes (-1) you've accumulated on answers under that specific tag (votes on questions do not count). As well, posts which are in community wiki status or that have been deleted do not count towards your tag score. Tag scores are only recalculated once daily, at 03:00 UTC.

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Bronze

• 100 total score
• only non-wiki / non-deleted answers count
• minimum of 20 answers on the tag to be considered

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Silver

• 400 total score
• non-wiki non-deleted answers
• minimum of 80 answers

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Gold

• 1000 total score
• non-wiki non-deleted answers
• minimum of 200 answers
• unlocks the mighty hammer of Mjölnir

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Unlike most other badges, tag badges are revoked immediately if you ever cease to meet their criteria, which can happen if your answers are downvoted, deleted, or converted to community wiki.

Answer 4

Area 51 badges

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Activist

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Refer 100 committers to a proposal

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Adherent

• silver; awarded once
• Follow through on five commitments

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Advocate

• bronze; awarded once
• Cast one up vote
• Under the old voting system, this badge's award condition was: Mark a question as a great on-topic example or a great off-topic example

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Analyst

• gold; awarded once
• Leave ten comments, each of which has a score of at least ten

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Autobiographer

• bronze; awarded once
• Enter something in every field of your user profile

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Campaigner

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Refer 25 committers to a proposal (note: this was reduced from 100 on DATE?)

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Caucus

• bronze; awarded once
• Create a proposal that is followed by a user other than yourself
  • The A51 badge page says "First proposal with 1 follower," but this was changed with minimal fanfare

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Centrist

• bronze; awarded once
• Ask a question that receives three upvotes
• Under the old voting system, this badge's award condition was: Ask a question that receives three "great on-topic example" votes

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Citizen Patrol

• bronze; awarded once
• Flag a post
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Citizen Patrol

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Civic Duty

• silver; awarded once
• Cast 300 total votes
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Civic Duty

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Commentator

• bronze; awarded once
• Post a total of ten comments
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Commentator

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Editor

• bronze; awarded once
• Edit a post (including your own)
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Editor

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Enthusiast

• silver; awarded once
• Visit the site for 30 days in a row
  • This can be tracked in the user profile under "consecutive days"
  • Simply loading the site is not enough to count as a "visit"
    • The exact amount of activity required to count as a visit is not public information
  • Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time
• Sometimes called "the woot! badge" because the company woot! sponsored the badge in the past
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Enthusiast
• Source: based on the assumption that this works the same way as the "regular" Enthusiast badge works

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Fanatic

• gold; awarded once
• Visit the site for 100 days in a row
  • This can be tracked in the user profile under "consecutive days"
  • Simply loading the site is not enough to count as a "visit"
    • The exact amount of activity required to count as a visit is not public information
  • Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time
• Sometimes called "the woot! badge" because the company woot! sponsored the badge in the past
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Fanatic
• Source: based on the assumption that this works the same way as the "regular" Fanatic badge works

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Filibuster

• bronze; awarded once
• Vote to delete a question

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Founder

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Participate in every phase of a successful site.
  • There are four required steps to earn this badge for a site.
    • Follow the site proposal.
    • During Definition, provide at least one example question that has at least one on-topic or off-topic vote.
    • During Commitment, commit to the proposal.
    • During Beta, follow through on the commitment you promised.
  • Source: Founder Badge Requirements

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Good Question

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Post a question that receives a score of 30
• Under the old voting system, this badge's award condition was: Earn 30 total "great ... example" votes on a question
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Good Question

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Grassroots

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Create a proposal which is followed by ten users at the same time

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Great Question

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Post a question that receives a score of 50
• Under the old voting system, this badge's award condition was: Earn 50 total "great ... example" votes on a question
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Great Question

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Lobbyist

• bronze; awarded once
• Refer a user who commits to a proposal

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Loyalist

• silver; awarded once
• Follow through on ten commitments

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Mortarboard

• bronze; awarded once
• Earn more than 200 reputation in a single day
• Reputation points earned for associating accounts do not count for the badge
• Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Mortarboard
• Source: based on the assumption that this badge works the same way as the "regular" Mortarboard badge works

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Movement

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Create a proposal which is followed by 50 users at the same time

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Nice Question

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Post a question that receives a score of ten
• Under the old voting system, this badge's award condition was: Earn ten total "great ... example" votes on a question
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Nice Question

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Pioneer

• bronze; awarded once
• Follow a proposal

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Promoter

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Refer five committers to a proposal

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Pundit

• silver; awarded once
• Leave ten comments, each of which has a score of at least five
• Analogous to the "regular" badge Pundit

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Radical

• bronze; awarded once
• Ask a question that receives three "great off-topic example" votes
• Badge is no longer in service because the "on-/off-topic example vote" system was removed

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Revolution

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Create a proposal which gains 100 followers and/or 100 committers

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Upholder

• bronze; awarded once
• Follow through on a commitment

Answer 5

Moderation Badges

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Citizen Patrol

• bronze; awarded once
• Flag a post
  • Previously only awarded for flagging a post as spam or offensive; this was changed on Feb. 9, 2011 and applied retroactively

Deputy

• silver; awarded once
• Raise 80 flags deemed helpful by moderators or the system

Marshal

• gold; awarded once
• Raise 500 flags deemed helpful by moderators or the system
• Initially named Marshall (source)

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• As of Jan 20, 2012, flag weight is no longer used
• Not awarded to ♦ moderators, only to regular registered users (source).

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Civic Duty

• silver; awarded once
• Cast 300 total votes
  • Upvotes and downvotes on questions and answers count
  • Comment votes do not count
  • Votes on community wiki posts do count

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Cleanup

• bronze; awarded once
• Perform a rollback of any post

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Constable

• gold; awarded once
• Served as a pro-tempore moderator for a year or through site graduation

Sheriff

• gold; awarded once
• Served as an elected moderator continuously for one year

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Critic

• bronze; awarded once
• Cast a downvote
  • Usually requires 125 reputation (rep requirements chart)

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Custodian

• bronze; awarded once per review task
• Complete at least one review task.
• The review doesn't necessarily have to take place via /review. That means users with low reputation are able to gain this badge, when reviewing a suggested edit on one of their own posts.

Reviewer

• silver; awarded once per review task
• Review 250 posts in a review task
• Replaces Reviewer (old) - see below

Reviewer (old)

• silver; awarded once; retired
• Already possess the Strunk & White badge
• Review at least 1000 posts from the review section or flag queue
• Take action on at least 200 posts from the review section or flag queue
• For the purposes of the badge, actions include
  • Editing successfully (i.e. declined edit suggestions do not count)
  • Flagging helpfully
  • Successfully voting to close
  • Voting on the post, unless the post gets deleted
  • Commenting on the post
• Proposed at two levels: silver at 1000 reviews/300 actions and bronze at 300/60. Initially introduced as a bronze badge with the 300/60 requirement, but was changed to silver at 1000/200 approximately one day later.
• Replaced with Custodian, Reviewer (see below), and Steward on September 21, 2012 (source)
  • Users who already had this badge will have an extra silver Reviewer badge, but it can no longer be attained

Steward

• gold; awarded once per review task
• Review 1,000 posts in a review task

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Disciplined

• bronze; awarded once
• Delete one of your own posts that has a score of three or more at the time of deletion
• Posts that you own but are not self deleted do not count.

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Editor

• bronze; awarded once
• Edit the title or body of any post (including your own)

Strunk & White

• silver; awarded once
• Perform a total of 80 edits between questions, answers, and tag wikis

Copy Editor

• gold; awarded once
• Perform a total of 500 edits between questions, answers, and tag wikis

Additional criteria for this badge family (excluding Editor):

• Edits on deleted posts do not count
• Edits to your own posts do not count (source)
• Edits to community wiki posts do count (source)
• Edits that consist only of tag changes do not count (source)
• Tag wiki edits do count (source)
• Edits you suggest before gaining full edit privileges do count, once approved (source)
• Each edited post counts only once, regardless of how many additional edits you may submit

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Electorate

• gold; awarded once
• Vote on 600 questions

• Have at least 25% of your total number of votes cast (questions and answers) be on questions

• Comment votes do not count

This seems to be an especially confusing badge, so here are some examples to address cases commonly complained about on MSO. Total is just the total number of votes cast (Questions + Answers) and Ratio is the total number of votes cast that are on questions.

┌───────────┬─────────┬───────┬───────┬─────────────────────┐  
│ Questions │ Answers │ Total │ Ratio │ Electorate awarded? │  
├───────────┼─────────┼───────┼───────┼─────────────────────┤  
│       600 │    2400 │  3000 │   20% │   No; ratio too low │  
│       201 │     401 │   602 │  ~33% │ No; < 600 questions │  
│       599 │       0 │   599 │  100% │ No; < 600 questions │  
│       600 │       0 │   600 │  100% │                 Yes │  
│       500 │     500 │  1000 │   50% │ No; < 600 questions │  
│       650 │     650 │  1300 │   50% │                 Yes │  
└───────────┴─────────┴───────┴───────┴─────────────────────┘

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Excavator

• bronze; awarded once
• Edited first post that was inactive for at least 6 months

Archaeologist

• silver; awarded once
• Edited 100 posts that were inactive for at least 6 months

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• Edits to your own posts do not count (source)
• Specific criteria for what edits count towards this badge are still vague and unknown

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Organizer

• bronze; awarded once
• Retag a question asked by another user (not your own question)

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Peer Pressure

• bronze; awarded once
• Delete one of your own posts that has a score of negative three or lower at the time of deletion
• Posts that you own but are not self deleted do not count.

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Proofreader

• bronze; awarded once
• Approved or rejected 100 suggested edits

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Sportsmanship

• silver; awarded once
• Cast 100 upvotes on competing answers (source)
  • If you answer a question and earn a score of at least one, all other answers to that question are considered "competing answers"
  • Deleted posts do not count
  • Retracted votes do not count
  • Wiki posts do count
  • If you upvote multiple competing answers on a single question, this counts multiple times, irrespective of how many (upvoted) answers you have on that question.
• Originally proposed in June 2009; implemented October 2010.

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Suffrage

• bronze; awarded once
• Cast 30 votes on questions and/or answers in a single day
  • Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time
• Originally proposed in June 2009; implemented October 2010.

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Supporter

• bronze; awarded once
• Cast an upvote
  • Usually requires 15 reputation (rep requirements chart)

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Synonymizer

• bronze; awarded once
• Receive approval for a tag synonym suggestion you submitted

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Tag Editor

• bronze; awarded once
• Edit a tag wiki entry
• Badges awarded prior to Feb. 9, 2011 were awarded under the old tag wiki editor rules:
  • Editing a tag wiki requires 1500 reputation, as well as one of the following:
  • Be in the top 20 answerers for the tag
  • Have an accumulated score of 100 votes on non-CW posts with positive score

Research Assistant

• silver; awarded once
• Edit 50 different tag wiki bodies

• You can edit an existing tag wiki or create a new one
• Edits to tag wiki excerpts do not count (source)

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Taxonomist

• silver; awarded once
• Create a tag that is applied to 50 questions
  • If User A creates a tag that falls into disuse and User B later uses the tag again, User A continues to get credit for creating the tag, for the purposes of this badge (source)

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Vox Populi

• bronze; awarded once
• Cast 40 votes - the maximum (limit) for a single day.
  • Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time
  • It is possible for the system to restrict you to fewer than 40 votes in a day.
  • You get two types of votes per day: ten can be used only on questions ("Q-votes") and 30 can be used on either questions or answers ("QA-votes").
  • When you vote on a question, the system tries to use your Q-votes before your QA-votes.
  • When you only have five QA-votes left for the day, the "You have n votes left today" counter starts to appear after you cast votes.
  • Once the counter starts, it never goes back up on that day. Therefore, if you start a day by voting mostly on answers, the counter can start when you have more than five total votes (i.e. including both Q and QA) left, making it impossible for you to reach 40 votes that day.
• First suggested here by waffles. A proposed refinement by Bill the Lizard was implemented a few days later.
• See also the blog post Vote For This Question or The Kitten Gets It

Answer 6

Participation Badges

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Autobiographer

• bronze; awarded once
• Enter something in the “About Me” field of your user profile (source)

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Caucus

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Visit an election page while an election is in progress
• You must have the minimum reputation required to be able to vote in the election
• You get the badge once per election, as long as you visit the election page while an election phase (nomination, primary or final) is in progress

Constituent

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Vote for at least one candidate in the election phase of a Community Moderator Election

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• Introduced during the 2012 Stack Overflow moderator election
• Not available on meta sites, which do not have elections

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Commentator

• bronze; awarded once
• Post a total of ten comments

Pundit

• silver; awarded once
• Leave 10 comments that each have a score of at least 5 (this was reduced from 10 to 5 on Nov 2, 2010)
• Comments on deleted posts count towards the badge (source), deleted comments do not (source)
• There will never be a gold version of this badge (source)

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Enthusiast

• silver; awarded once
• Visit the site for 30 days in a row

Fanatic

• gold; awarded once
• Visit the site for 100 days in a row

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• Simply loading the site is not enough to count as a "visit" (source)
  • The exact amount of activity required to count as a visit is not public information
• Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time

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Mortarboard

• bronze; awarded once
• Earned at least 200 reputation in a single day

Epic

• silver; awarded once
• Earned at least 200 reputation on 50 days

Legendary

• gold; awarded once
• Earned at least 200 reputation on 150 days

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• All positive reputation activities, including up votes, accepted answers, bounties, and suggested edits, count towards this badge except for association bonuses, which do not count. (source)
• Down votes cast or received do not count towards this badge. (source)
• Each "day" lasts from midnight UTC to immediately before midnight, UTC; days are not counted in local time

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Precognitive

• bronze; awarded once
• Awarded to those who followed the Area 51 proposal for a particular Stack Exchange site before it entered the commitment phase, when the site enters its private beta phase.
  • In other words, it marks the people who have been around and supported the site before it was even launched
• Not attainable on all sites; in particular, those that were launched before the Area 51 site creation process was invented, like Stack Overflow, Super User, and Server Fault
  • Despite this, it still appears in the badge list for every site in order to inform and incentivize participation on Area 51.

Beta

• silver; awarded once
• Participate actively in a site’s private beta phase by:
  • Voting 10 times
  • Adding 3 posts with score > 0
  • Visiting the site on 3 separate days
• All three requirements must be met, and met before the public beta begins (or possibly before the badge script runs)
• Not awarded on Meta sites, including Meta Stack Exchange

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Quorum

• bronze; awarded once
• One post with score of 2 or more on the related meta site

Convention

• silver; awarded once
• Post at least 10 posts which each have a score of 2 or more on the related meta site

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• By definition, not available on meta sites, including Meta Stack Exchange

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Talkative

• bronze; awarded once
• Post at least ten messages in chat
• Receive at least one star in chat
• Chat messages in private rooms also count for this badge

Outspoken

• silver; awarded once
• Receive stars from at least ten different users for at least 10 different messages in chat
• Each message is only counted once, and each user is only counted once. So it’s not enough if one message is starred by nine people, and a tenth user stars nine other messages.
• If you want to know, here’s the precise definition: Consider the bipartite graph whose vertices are all your messages and all the users, and whose edges are the stars you received. So a user (vertex) and a message (vertex) are connected by an edge if and only if the given user has starred the given message. You are eligible for the Outspoken badge if and only if this graph has a matching number of at least ten.

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Yearling

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Have a reputation of at least (number of years since registration) × 200 + 1 (starting reputation)
  • The number of years is not restricted to integers and increases continuously. For example, if at the 2-year mark you don’t have the 400 required reputation, the number of years still continues to increase. So half way through year 3 (i.e., after 2.5 years), you’d need 2.5 × 200 = 500 reputation to qualify for the second yearling badge.
  • If at any point you qualify for this year’s badge, you will receive all badges you had previously missed up until this year whenever the script runs again.
  • The badge used to require only (years) × 100 reputation; this was changed after the account association bonus was implemented

Answer 7

Other Badges

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Analytical

• bronze; awarded once; retired
• As of June 2013, this badge is no longer awarded due to the FAQ being changed to the Help Center all across the network. Those who earned it previously get to keep it.
• Visit every section of the FAQ

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Announcer

• bronze; awarded multiple times
• Share a link to a question that is visited by 25 unique IP addresses

Booster

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Share a link to a question that is visited by 300 unique IP addresses

Publicist

• gold; awarded multiple times
• Share a link to a question that is visited by 1000 unique IP addresses

Additional criteria for this badge family:

• The date that the question was asked is irrelevant
• Only clicks from outside the Stack Exchange network count towards the badge
• Introduced in Stack Overflow blog post Announcer, Booster, and Publicist Badges (although the unique IP addresses requirement changed and time limit requirement was dropped).

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Census

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Completed the annual Stack Overflow survey and supplied your profile URL
• Introduced in 2017 to encourage more users to participate in the Developer Survey
• Specific to Stack Overflow only

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Informed

• bronze; awarded once
• Read the entire About page
• Introduced as part of the new "Quick Start" guide
• Not awarded on per-site metas, as their about page redirects to their FAQ page
• The first badge that is awarded immediately and not by a scheduled job.

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Not a Robot

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Attend an event organized by Stack Overflow or one where Stack Exchange's employees are actively participating
• Introduced to promote socialization on Stack Overflow
• The first badge that is awarded manually
• Specific to Stack Overflow only

Answer 8

Documentation Badges (Stack Overflow)

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Note

As Stack Overflow Documentation has been discontinued, all Documentation badges, except for Documentation Beta and Documentation Pioneer, have been retired and revoked from users who earned them. In exchange, a new single silver badge, Documentation User, was awarded to those who earned at least one Documentation badge, excluding Educated.

The decision to revoke the badges is explained in this post, excerpt below:

We also have a longstanding policy against revoking badges. But we've never had a badge set for a discontinued beta feature either. While we could just retire them, it seems confusing to show expired Documentation features on the list of badges. In addition, we'd lose a lot of good names for potential future badges. As a compromise, anyone who earned a Documentation badge other than Educated (for reading the tour) will be issued a newly minted silver Documentation Beta badge.

Read more: 1, 2, 3

Here's a screenshot of the Docs badge set before most badges were retired.

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Current badges

The following badges remain after Documentation was phased out.

Documentation Beta

• silver; awarded once
• Contributed 3+ substantive pieces of documentation during the private beta
• Requirement must be met before the private beta ended

Documentation Pioneer

• silver; awarded once
• Contributed 3+ substantive pieces of documentation in the first month of documentation
  • awarded from July 21, 2016 till August 20, 2016

Documentation User

• silver; awarded once
• Earned at least one badge for contributing to Stack Overflow Documentation, apart from Educated
• Note that only one badge is awarded to each user, no matter how many Docs badges they earned.
• As all Documentation badges, except for Documentation Beta and Documentation Pioneer, are revoked, this badge is meant as a compromise for those who earned at least one Documentation badge during the beta.

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Discontinued badges

The following badges were revoked after Documentation was retired.

Backer

• bronze; awarded once
• Cast an upvote
  • Usually requires 15 reputation (rep requirements chart)

Bluebook

• bronze; awarded once
• Cited a topic or example you've contributed to in an answer you posted
  • Not awarded for questions
• Answer MUST be upvoted at least once
• You must be a contributor to the topic/ example cited

Creditor

• bronze; awarded once
• Cited a topic or example you haven't contributed to in an answer you posted
  • Not awarded for questions
• Answer MUST be upvoted at least once AFTER the citation is added
• You must not be a contributor to the topic/ example cited

Educated

• bronze; awarded once
• Read the entire Documentation Tour
• This badge does not count towards earning the Documentation User badge.

Incrementalist

• bronze; awarded once
• Submitted a proposed change of a topic
  • Approved by others

Knowledgeable

• silver; awarded once
• Submitted a proposed change of a topic that handles others' improvement requests
  • Approved by others
• Proposed change must be marked as Handling improvement requests

Peer Review

• bronze; awarded once
• First review of someone else's proposed change

Primer

• bronze; awarded once
• First topic request to either be upvoted by others or to have a topic created from it

Renovator

• bronze; awarded once
• First improvement request of a topic or example

Answer 9

Why didn't I get badge name right now?

(even though the badge progress tracker on my user profile or the review stats page indicates that I qualify for the badge; I even got the message "Congratulations - you earned badge name")

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Most badges (with the exception of the Informed badge) are awarded by a scheduled job which runs once every hour and are non-deterministic, i.e. there is no guarantee that your badge will be awarded within an hour.

Tag badges are based on tag scores, and those are calculated once every day (in the early UTC morning), so tag badges are awarded even less often.

More information can be found here: How long does it take for badges to be awarded? How are they generated?