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Should some badges come with added reputation?

For example: Civic Duty gives you +100 reputation.

I'm not advocating reputation for every badge just a select few.

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5 Answers 5

up vote 11 down vote accepted

I don't think so. Badges tend to come via the same sort of actions which gain you reputation anyway... I don't think it makes sense to make the reputation system even more complicated in this way.

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No . –  Ólafur Waage Jun 30 '09 at 14:52
Whitespace before a full stop? Ick ;) –  Jon Skeet Jun 30 '09 at 15:16

It's not a bad idea, but it is just not needed.

People already find enough intrinsic rewards in getting badges. The badges don't need any extra reinforcement.

And since it's not needed, I would rather the development team of stackoverflow (and related sites) spend their time implementing other things.

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I don't entirely agree. The badges that would benefit most from this are ones that generally require significant amounts of unrequited work that benefits the community. As I mentioned in my answer, if it can increase voting and refinement editing (both in a good way) I'm all in favor of it. –  Quinn Taylor Jun 30 '09 at 16:12
Agreed. I feel like I have low rep because I am a new programmer, but I am working on getting my editing badge (for grammar and readability) and I'd like to get some sort of recognition. A parade or something, maybe. –  thumbtackthief Jul 23 '13 at 16:24


I've always disliked the fact that reputation follows technical knowledge rather than community building. I realize that asking/answering questions is a form of community building, but trying to improve the site by discussing it is at least as important. To use a metaphor from an SO question I posted last year, the person who carefully tends the Banana Slug article on wikipedia is important, but isn't nearly as critical to the site as the admins who try to create, influence, or enforce policies^. SO's system has always considered the banana slug guy to be the lynchpin, while the people who are editing grammar or trying to change the way people use the site get bubkis**.

If you get the Strunk & White badge (and some others: Taxonomist, Editor) you should certainly get a significant number of points. Would some people "game the system" by editing articles just for the points? Sure. But if they're out there editing they're doing good so it's OK. (You're really just paying them for working on the site...)

And not lots and lots of points, but 100 points is enough to be satisfying but not enough to screw up the balance of the game^H^H^H reputation system.

^ Most wikipedia admins are a bunch of power-crazed Nazis. I'm well aware.

** They actually have to have quite a bit of juice before they're even allowed to do those things, and the juice comes from technical knowledge.

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I agree with the "some" part. Anything that has to do with popularity (lots of upvotes, views, etc.) should not come with any extra points, since that could just incite people to write more funny, subjective, and or controversial questions.

Tags that require actual consistent work would be good candidates (like Civic Duty, Strunk & White, Taxonomist, etc.) and could encourage more community participation. Some of my SO pet peeves include (1) the dismal votes/view ratio (realizing of course that some people aren't site members, or don't have enough rep to vote) and (2) poor tagging, poor question titles, and typos. Perhaps "two birds with one stone" is optimistic, but a fella can hope...

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Explored Downtown.
Achievement Earned: All New York Explored.
Exp 100 awarded.
Level Up to level 50.
Achievement Earned: Level 50!
Exp 100 awarded.
Player gains perk point.
+10% exp rate Perk selected.
Achievement Earned: All exp perks!
Exp 110 awarded.
Achievement Earned: Achievement Chain x4.
Exp 110 awarded.
Level up to level 51.
Player gains perk point.
+10% melee damage Perk selected.
Game saved.
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