I don't agree with the [tag:status-declined] decision on this question.

Every big site complains about not having enough good questions:

- Meta Stack Exchange
   - http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9508/why-arent-people-voting-for-questions
   - http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56817/can-we-prevent-some-of-the-low-quality-questions-from-entering-our-system
- StackOverflow
   - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254358/why-the-backlash-against-poor-questions
   - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251758/why-is-stack-overflow-so-negative-of-late
- SuperUser
   - http://meta.superuser.com/questions/108/super-user-attracting-too-many-open-ended-subjective-questions
- Programmers
   - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here

And **here's the one that inspired me to write this answer:**

- Server Fault
   - http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/6701/server-fault-needs-professional-quality-questions-not-just-questions-from-profe

We get too many crap questions on these sites because our best, brightest users don't ask any, or very few, good questions. [Jon Skeet (34/31,418)](http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet); [Darin Dimitrov (35/20,819)](http://stackoverflow.com/users/29407/darin-dimitrov); [Hans Passant (2/14,831)](http://stackoverflow.com/users/17034/hans-passant); etc. etc. etc. I find this **very hard to believe** that our best users never have good questions, or things they need to look up....

> #We should have badges that inspire our very excellent community to increase the signal of our signal-to-noise ratio.

But I think that the badges listed by Jon Ericson in the original post aren't good enough. A score of 1 or more is not enough. These badges should be tied to one of:

1. A higher threshold for counting for the badge. Perhaps `n` questions with **3** or more votes, **5** or more, etc.
2. Having more answers than questions. Perhaps badges like:
  - **Student** - Bronze - Asked first question and answered one (or two?) questions with each scoring of 1 or more
  - **Sophomore** - Silver - Asked 10 questions and answered 10 (or 20?) questions with each scoring of 1 or more
  - **Socrates** - Gold - Asked 50 questions and answered 50 (or 100?) questions with each scoring 1 or more
  - These wouldn't have to be self answers, just ensure that the user isn't simply being a help vampire. Though they would be allowed to be self answers.
3. Some combination of 1 and 2. The numbers could be played with.