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I'm curious what the rationale is behind requiring twenty answers for a given tag before awarding a bronze badge for that tag. This seems to motivate the wrong behavior; in particular, right now I have 100+ upvotes in "interview questions" with only ten answers, and so the best way for me to get a tag badge in that category now is to go around to old questions with that tag and offering answers even if they don't say anything new. I'm not going to do this because I have integrity :-), but I could easily see this motivating people with a few really good answers going around offering a slew of bad ones to get recognition for the work they've already done.

Is there a rationale I'm missing? Or is this a valid concern?

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  • Another motivation for this is to prevent a single extremely upvoted answer from getting several free tag badges. (myself being a good example of this)
    – Mysticial
    Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 20:21

1 Answer 1

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The rationale is, IMO, to ensure that you are actually an "expert" in the tag.

Does the top answer to the "Hidden Features of C#?" question, which basically suggests Path.Combine warrant a bronze (or indeed, I believe silver in this case!) tag badge? I think not! =)

A tag badge should indicate breadth and depth of knowledge in a subject, as well as rewarding a consistent contribution to stackoverflow in that specific subject.

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  • The 'hidden features' post is a CW post, which isn't counted, so that example isn't valid
    – Yi Jiang
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 11:35
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    True, bad example, but the point is clear.
    – user138231
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 12:00
  • @Yi Jiang: If you don't like the example here is another: stackoverflow.com/questions/8676/… It doesn't have 100 upvotes yet (97 now) but once it have them, it would provide 3 bronze badges if the rule with 20 answers doesn't exist.
    – Ladislav Mrnka
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 12:37

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