63

There are currently two badges for questions favorited by a certain number of users:

Favorite Question Question favorited by 25 users
Stellar Question Question favorited by 100 users

Why isn't there a bronze badge for a question favorited by 10 users? This would fit with the pattern of Nice/Good/Great badges for questions/answers, which require 10/25/100 votes. Thanks!

Improve this question
10
  • 16
    Do we have to have badges for everything?
    – random
    Commented May 27, 2011 at 19:22
  • 35
    @Random: No, but I like consistency... When things aren't consistent, they drive me crazy...
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Commented May 27, 2011 at 19:23
  • 1
    @Pearsonartphoto consistent with what? There are other things that only have silver/gold badges (Enthusiast/Fanatic, and sort of Civic duty/Electorate). To be truly consistent you'd want to introduce bronze level badges for those too :)
    – Daniel DiPaolo
    Commented May 27, 2011 at 19:36
  • 11
    We used to have one, but it totally dissed Jon Skeet one day, and was from thenceforth banned from the site. The remainder of the badges have learned to be more respectful as a result.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented May 27, 2011 at 19:49
  • 4
    @Daniel: Consistant with the Nice/Good/Great question/answer badges.
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Commented May 27, 2011 at 19:56
  • 6
    @Daniel, I consider that Supporter is the bronze for Civic Duty/Electorate :)
    – Brian Reichle
    Commented May 28, 2011 at 0:35
  • 3
    @random Of course not. But maybe a badge for a question favorited by 10 users is more "worthy" than, say, a badge for one's first rollback ("Cleanup").
    – lockstep
    Commented Jan 27, 2012 at 23:29
  • @random Yes! Now where's my contrarian badge?
    – user164291
    Commented Feb 4, 2012 at 1:52
  • @random - Why... Yes. Yes, we do. To boost self-esteem & such.
    – Caffeinated
    Commented Feb 25, 2012 at 14:04
  • 1
    Favouriting a question doesn't mean I like the question. Quite often it's combined with a downvote, to remind me to remove the downvote if the question improves.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Nov 22, 2012 at 11:31

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
30
+50

+1 I had thought the exact same question but I never asked :-P

How about

Worthy Question Question favorited by 10 users

Favorite Question Question favorited by 25 users
Stellar Question Question favorited by 100 users

Improve this answer
2
  • 2
    Worthy/Good. Might get a little confusing there.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Aug 18, 2012 at 5:33
  • 2
    @Cole perhaps we could name the badge "Bookmark", or "Clippy" :)
    – Nick Dandoulakis
    Commented Aug 18, 2012 at 7:47
32

A possible reason for the lack of a bronze "favoriting" badge is that favoriting seems to perform two somewhat different functions:

  • Users might want to watch a question closely for a time -- they're interested in possible answers to it, or perhaps plan to write an answer themselves if no one else comes up with a good one. Questions of this kind normally will be removed from a user's "Favorite" selection after a while.

  • Users might feel that a question and/or some of its existing answers are of special interest to them, sort of "canonical". Although the user's interest might wear away eventually, the inital intention at least is to add such questions to one's "Favorite" list for good.

I suppose that the existing "Favorite Question" and "Stellar Question" silver/gold badges only aim at favorites of the second type. And with 25 or even 100 "Favorite" marks, a question surely is of the "canonical" kind. Perhaps the SO developers felt that with 10 marks, one can't be sure if a question is only of passing interest to its followers, and therefore they didn't introduce a corresponding bronze badge. To find out whether the developers were right, one would have to delve into SO's data dump.

(Some evidence from tex.sx, mostly anecdotic: Ar the moment, 28 "Favorite Question" badges and zero "Stellar Question" badges have been earned [a few questions are close to "Stellar"]. The number of questions with at least 10 "Favorite" marks seems to be about five to ten times lower than the number of questions with a "Nice Question" badge, i.e., the former questions are probably of permanent interest to their followers. For tex.sx, I'd say: Yes, please introduce a "Worthy Question" bronze badge!)

EDIT: According to the latest data dump, the frequency of the proposed "Worthy Question" badge would be somewhat above that of the "Good Question" badge at SO. At tex.sx., "Worthy Questions" would be even rarer than "Good Questions".

                                SO   tex.sx

Stellar Questions              419        0
Favorite Questions           3,694       28
Questions with >= 10        14,913      147
    "Favorite" marks
    ("Worthy Questions")

Great Questions*               986        3
Good Questions*             10,357      162
Nice Questions*             51,090    1,762

* as of 2012-02-05

EDIT: Another possible concern with regard to the suggested "Worthy Question" badge is that users are allowed to favorite their own questions, and so may chip in 10% of the "Worthy Question" requirement. I don't think this tips the scale against the proposed badge. (And if it's really a concern, the criteria for the [Worthy/]Favorite/Stellar Question badges could be changed to "Question favorited by 10/25/100 other users.)

Disclosure: If a "Worthy Question" badge would be introduced and retroactively applied to existing questions, I'd earn this badge five times at tex.sx.

Improve this answer
1
  • 17
    Even getting 10 people to watch a question for a time is worthy of something, I would think...
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Commented Feb 4, 2012 at 2:20

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .