Old unanswered questions are becoming a huge problem, and we need all the tools to better attack them.
We have been toying with the idea of a new badge for answering a question one month later and being the first answer with a score of 2 or more. (assigned retroactively) - odata query
But this so called "glate answer" badge, would need a slightly better name.
Any suggestions?
Because it looks like the necromancer badge, you could consider the following:
If there is a gold version of this badge, it has to be called "Deus Ex Machina".
. . . a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object.
What about 'scavenger' - for picking around in the remains of a dead question.
Now i consider it, 'Garbage-Collector' might be a better name...
I'd go for Zombie-Killer :D Alert, alert, dead question walking...bang!
Necromancer (silver); existing, included for comparison
Answered more than 60 days later with score of 5 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.
(Removed "a question" from description.)
Revival (bronze); name credits to Gamecat
Answered more than 30 days later with earliest answer scoring 2 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.
Reanimator (gold); name credits to Gamecat
Answered more than 90 days later scoring 4 or more with earliest answer scoring 2 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.
Necromancer retains its current (slightly different yet still useful) meaning.
A query shows 473 retroactive Reanimators; compare to 1,335 Great Answer and 54 Reversal badges.
Both Revival and Reanimator require an answer which would remove the question from the unanswered list — this feels like the main goal of the badge request. (However, neither yet deals with accepted answers, so answers may qualify for questions that did not appear on the unanswered list.)
All Reanimators also earn a Revival badge (similar to Nice→Good→Great), but also encourage answering older questions (90 instead of 30 days) and require a "slightly better" answer (itself scoring 4). I arrived at four by playing with the query; this may need tweaking, but answers to older questions often don't attract much attention.
Both Revival and Reanimator have a race condition: answering an "unanswered" question could bring attention to it and thus upvotes for older answers — resulting in disqualification to the newer answer. Similarly, you could later be disqualified by earlier answers reaching a score of 2, which won't remove the badge but may make it much harder to collect multiples.
All three badges should apply to CW answers. Only 13 of the 473 Reanimators are CW.
How about Late Bloomer? I like this because it kinda goes hand-in-hand with the plant theme of the Tumbleweed badge (i.e. a question that is still unanswered after a month likely earned a Tumbleweed badge, and the good (but late) answer to it earns a Late Bloomer badge).
I had first thought of Ugly Duckling, but that sounds like it has a bit of a negative connotation.
How about an Exorcist badge.
Deleting or voting to delete a question that is up for 6 months, receives large number of views but zero votes and zero answers.
The original problem is that there are too many Unanswered/Tumbleweed questions. Badges should focus on moving these out of Unanswered, by either...Answering, Deleting, Marking Dupe? </my2¢>
