Currently, there are ~1362564 users who have the "Vote Up" privilege.

Since the beginning of this year, 1554407 users have joined Stack Overflow, and 86837 of them have > 15 reputation points, meaning that they have the vote up privilege.

Badges are awarded at a fixed reputation threshold, for example, the "Nice Answer" is awarded when your answer gets ≥ 10 votes.

My question

Since the community is growing, and since badges can sometimes reflect someone's strength/knowledge in some field, will thresholds of "awarded at" be changed someday? Does someone take statistics into consideration? Or, if the thresholds are unrelated to number of users, on what were they set/based?

Note that I'm not requesting changes, I'm just wondering...

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    It is not without precedent that privilege levels might increase. New SE sites start out with lower thresholds for privileges and increase them over time as the site grows. However, badge thresholds don't change, and badges are almost never revoked. – Cody Gray Dec 28 '16 at 9:19
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    @CodyGray Do you think they should be a connection between #users and badges' threshold? – Maroun Dec 28 '16 at 9:25
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    It's an interesting question for sure. I hadn't thought of this before. I'm leaning towards no, but would have to think on it before making a final decision. – Cody Gray Dec 28 '16 at 9:29
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    Usually you have not only more users but also more technologies people are discussing. Have you checked the number of tags? Many users stay in their niche, which might actually grow or shrink. – usr1234567 Dec 28 '16 at 12:39
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    Why would the number of users change the threshold at which we consider an individual user to be sufficiently knowledgeable to wield the upvote (or gain any other privilege)? Is it because you expect that the individual users will be receiving more upvotes themselves from the mass of users? – beaker Dec 28 '16 at 20:11
  • Similar question from a long time ago: meta.stackexchange.com/q/1587/130126 – Michael Kristofik Dec 28 '16 at 21:47
  • @beaker Yes. If more and more users have the privilege of upvoting, many (good) answers will get more upvotes. – Maroun Dec 29 '16 at 8:10
  • If that's the case, then the average score for an upvoted answer after some arbitrary time period (a month? a year?) should be increasing as the number of users increases. I have no idea how difficult it would be to get that data. – beaker Dec 29 '16 at 15:42
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    If they did this for badges or privileges, it would be pretty terrible for people who only look at niche tags. It's already pretty difficult to get the tag badges for niche tags. Reputation is much harder to come by, as are certain non-tag badges (like Nice Answer). – Jo Douglass Dec 30 '16 at 12:21

I don't think so (but of course Stack Overflow may make other decisions in the future), but they might introduce new badges.

They have done so for the Proofreader badge, a bronze badge for reviewing 100 suggested edits, which was created at a time where that was the only review queue. As @approxiblue points out, there was a Reviewer badge as well, more or less corresponding to the current Steward badge. After the other ones (First Posts, Close Votes, etc.) were instantiated, a new three-tier badge set was developed: Custodian (1) - Reviewer (250) - Steward (1000). These did not replace the existing badge for suggested edits.

Also, even though there are more users capable of upvoting now, there are also more users who can write a Nice Answer on the same question as you. So, to put it in economic terms, the market has become bigger, but the competition as well.

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    Right, we could award Platinum badges, or perhaps Rhodium and Palladium. – Cody Gray Dec 28 '16 at 9:28
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    Don't forget Unicornium. – Glorfindel Dec 28 '16 at 9:29
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    Unobtainium would make for a fun badge. – Lightness Races in Orbit Dec 28 '16 at 19:59
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    This one is made of unobtainium (at least on Stack Overflow). – Glorfindel Dec 28 '16 at 20:01
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    @LightnessRacesinOrbit I understand that Jon Skeet has several of those, but there is no entity available in HTML to display them. – Andrew Morton Dec 28 '16 at 20:19
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    The Reviewer badge used to have a higher threshold than it is currently, interestingly. – approxiblue Dec 28 '16 at 20:53

IMO, instead of increasing the threshold values for the existing badges, rolling out new badges with increased cutoffs will be easier as well as motivating for the existing users.

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