There are multiple badges that one cannot achieve anymore, like badges for participation in the Documentation Beta or badges that are marked as retired. I find it to be extremely demotivating to have those badges show up in the list of badges. I would like to propose two possibilities here:

  • Change the unachievable badges to be in a group named "Retired"
  • Hide them, mark them (add a grayscale or something), etc.

This would make it so much more interesting to go after badge completion, because one could achieve 100% badge progress again - having unmarked badges that just cannot be achieved is rude to people who strive to get all badges.

Are there any real arguments against this?

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    "extremely demotivating"? You are doing it wrong. Consider something like "how to use SO and enjoy it". – Hans Passant Feb 19 '17 at 23:52
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    I do not want to say that SO is only about "hunting" the badges. I just like to see some progress there while I continue answering and helping; having unachievable badges doesn't help with this. – NikxDa Feb 19 '17 at 23:54
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    I've long since wished for this; the current situation is just lazy and frustrating to me. – TylerH Feb 20 '17 at 15:52

I could envision something that sets the opacity lower on badges which are no longer obtainable...

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...but I also worry that any change to this view may send a more confusing message than intended, given that faded out/disabled/crossed out text implies something different than something that's simply not awardable. Grouping them together works, but then you still get the question of, "Why?"

There's also the fact that these badges exist on other sites and could have been awarded...

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...but are no longer eligible to be. Communicating that these people have the badge and others can't get it isn't something that's accomplished with simply hiding or dimming the badges.

Remember: Stack Overflow isn't the only site in the network. It's by far the largest site in the network, but it's no snowflake when it comes to these kinds of things. A change in this sort of UI should be beneficial and significant to all sites, not just SO.

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    If the base assumption ("seeing badges which are unawardable is somehow bad") is true, then it will be beneficial to all sites. Adding a few bits of logic which only hides/demotes/strikes-through/… those badges when they are in fact not achievable anymore would help with the generality of this proposal. – Jonas Schäfer Feb 20 '17 at 6:30
  • @JonasWielicki: I can't speak for the SO devs but I wonder if the overhead of adding that degree of custom logic to each site is worth it. Blanket rules would cover most of it but I'm not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. – Makoto Feb 20 '17 at 6:49
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    @JonasWielicki: Take the Analytical badge. It's long-since retired, but even new sites still have it listed in their badges list, which leads me to believe that this logic is not bespoke. Making it bespoke or introducing new logic for this...not 100% confident it would fix much since there hasn't been all that much friction over unearnable badges. – Makoto Feb 20 '17 at 6:53
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    I think it would be very beneficial, because adding opacity or grouping them will (1) make clear that those badges are unachievable and (2) introduce a difference between special case badges and normal badges. This would benefit the site, because users will get a clearer image of badges - unachievable ones are taken out of focus. – NikxDa Feb 20 '17 at 12:38
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    On hover of lower-opacity badge entries, you could show full opacity (like downvoted posts) and offer a tooltip that says "These badges are no longer achievable on this network". – TylerH Feb 20 '17 at 15:48
  • @Makoto The Analytical badge is even listed on brand new sites; I think that all sites have all badges and as such the system could be hard to fix. – wizzwizz4 Feb 22 '17 at 22:30
  • @wizzwizz4: Yes, I reach that conclusion in an earlier comment I had made. – Makoto Feb 22 '17 at 22:44

Building on Makoto's answer, I think it would be very well possible to just hide those badges for people who can't get them anymore, and add a message explaining that some unobtainable badges have been hidden. I don't see how that could cause any major problems.


The lower-opacity solution is interesting, I hadn't thought about that.

Another solution, which I proposed on this duplicate question is to remove those badges from the "unearned" tab (though that does also change the definition of "unearned" to "not earned and available", which is asymmetric to our definition of "earned" which may include badges that are no longer available).

Another solution is to add an "available" tab to the right of the "all" tab that includes all badges that can still be earned.

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