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I think there should be a badge for having a certain number of your answers accepted, either in general, or in a specific tag. It would exclude Community Wiki and Self-Accepted answers. There could be different levels of badges. It's probably similar to the Unsung Hero badge, but score would be irrelevant.

This would help incentivize and reward someone who answers the questions well, without tying it to a rep score.

Related (but not 'for all' questions).

EDIT: Think of those who work in niche tags, put hours into their answers, and are lucky to get a few votes with their accept. This would reward them more for the effort put in.

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    I think this would probably encourage people to start deleting perfectly good answers if they didn't get accepted; you'd need to counteract that somehow
    – Michael Mrozek
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:22
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    Can somebody explain why this was downvoted? It may be a bad idea, but it's not a bad question. (Or is it? I don't read meta very often.)
    – Pointy
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:25
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    @Pointy, on Meta, downvotes mean "it's a bad idea." See this FAQ entry.
    – Pops
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:26
  • @Pointy - on Meta down-votes are used to indicate that you think something is a bad idea.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:26
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    @Michael, I don't mean a percentage of accepted answers, I mean a raw quantity.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:27
  • Ah OK cool - thanks so much everybody!
    – Pointy
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:37
  • @Lance: The enlightened badge can be awarded multiple times.
    – Gelatin
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:58
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    @Simon, Yes, but that doesn't matter at all in niche tags, where you can scramble for just a few upvotes.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 14, 2010 at 21:04
  • Although I think too many badges confused, but this question is not necessarily to be -6, just upvoted.
    – Ken Kin
    Feb 21, 2013 at 10:47

4 Answers 4

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I think there should be a "First accepted answer" (not self accepted) badge to go along with the other "firsts" badges.

Current first badges are, [Altruist], [Benefactor], [Citizen Patrol], [Cleanup], , [Critic], [Editor], [Enlightened], [Investor], [Mortarboard], [Organizer], [Promoter], [Student], [Supporter], and [Tag Editor], [Teacher].

Surely there's room for a first accepted answer in there... basically in the spirit of badges like [Student] and [Teacher].

I'd suggest something like:

[Mentor] - First answer that was accepted by someone other than you.

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  • What behavior does this encourage, beyond self-accepting?
    – Shog9
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:16
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    @Shog9 - it shouldn't apply to self accepted answers.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:50
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    @Shoq9 - What ChrisF said. Edited to reflect. - It encourages participation in the site when a user is most likely to quit (at the very beginning... look at all the 1 rep users).
    – Peter Ajtai
    Oct 14, 2010 at 23:04
  • @Peter: if a user gets his first answer accepted, he won't be a 1-rep user anymore. But my point was, users can't do anything to make their answers be accepted (outside of the self-accept thing). So you're not rewarding them for something they've done, just something that... happened. They're already being rewarded for posting a useful answer, by the acceptance itself!
    – Shog9
    Oct 14, 2010 at 23:11
  • @Shoq9 - There's [ a badge for receiving your first upvote on a question you wrote ](stackoverflow.com/badges/2/student). How would this be different?
    – Peter Ajtai
    Oct 15, 2010 at 0:18
  • @Peter: It wouldn't. If anything, that would make it somewhat redundant.
    – Shog9
    Oct 15, 2010 at 1:41
  • @Shoq9 - What I'm saying is that there are already badges that are rewards for things that "have happened." Sure, you get points for an accepted answer, but I think commemorating your first accepted answer with a badge is a good thing, and it is consistent with the spirit of several other existing badges.
    – Peter Ajtai
    Oct 15, 2010 at 2:26
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+50

I asked the same question that was rightly closed for being an exact duplicate. I think that a badge for 100 or whatever accepted (silver) answers and 1000 or whatever accepted answers(gold) makes a lot of sense.

currently there are badges for good answers (+10 votes on an answer) and tenacity (the zero score accepted answers), but nothing that speaks to giving correct, but perhaps not spectacular, answers over time. Great answers come from great questions. Not all questions are particularly insightful. Sometimes all thats needed is 'look at this interface' or whatever. That type of answer will never get real credit because there are few upvotes in it. The proposed badges fix that.

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We have +15 rep granted, regardless of the daily cap, for accepted answers. That is the incentive for writing good answers (above and beyond the normal rep gain from upvotes from good answers). (We also have a number of badges, some related to number of upvotes, some related to acceptance, for good answers, by the way.)

And your suggestion is to add another incentive for something that is already incentivized and needs no more incentivization. That makes no sense.

Do you have some evidence that all of the current incentives aren't doing their jobs?

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    There are many badges that people get rep earning, like the Question and Answer badges that take so many upvotes. You're getting rep all the way there.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:35
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    And​​​​​​​​​​​?
    – Welbog
    Oct 14, 2010 at 20:37
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This would help incentivize and reward someone who answers the questions well, without tying it to a rep score.

There are already two badges (Tenacious, Unsung Hero) for users who post helpful answers to obscure questions and so never get up-votes.

There are lots more badges for answers that do get up-voted. Including a couple for answers that get accepted.

So... This fills in the gap between them? Answers that get accepted and up-voted, but never gain much popularity? What behavior does this encourage, beyond "answering questions" - a behavior that is so fundamental to the site that the vast bulk of available rewards are geared toward encouraging it?

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  • All of the upvote badges require more upvotes than most niche posts generate. It encourages "answer questions" in niche tags knowing that you may not get many votes, but there's a badge out there on the horizon.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 14, 2010 at 21:31
  • @Lance: How? How does it encourage this in a way that Tumbleweed, Necromancer, the tag-stats pages, tag badges... all do not? Time and time again, we hear complaints about how their answers don't get accepted - are you complaining that you have plenty of accepted answers, but still feel unrewarded?
    – Shog9
    Oct 14, 2010 at 21:41
  • because most all of those badges take a lot of votes, so in niche tags where there aren't a lot of votes it would give incentive. (Tumbleweed is a red herring here).
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:09
  • @Lance: right on Tumbleweed - I was thinking "niche participation". But I'm still not understanding your argument: do you have a niche in mind, where votes are scarce but askers are fond of accepting answers, and you'd just love to post some but can't quite motivate yourself to do it? Maybe run some queries, see who would get these badges if they existed now...
    – Shog9
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:23
  • I post anyway, trying to get all the small votes I can to add up to get the tag badges (Excel & VBA), but I'm a pretty stubborn goal-oriented fellow.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 14, 2010 at 22:31

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