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I was looking at the achievements and I noticed that some might actually have a negative impact on the value of this SE website.

  • Vox Populi/Civic Duty (Use the maximum 40 votes in a day/ Vote 300 or more times)

May cause people to spam votes in order to get the achievement.

  • Cleanup (First rollback)

I'm not even sure on how to cause this, but I don't believe it's a good thing. Nor should we make people try to get a rollback (for the achievement) I believe.

  • Disciplined (Delete own post with score 3 or higher)

This is never a good thing?

  • Peer pressure (Delete own post with score -3 or lower)

This requires you to have a -3 post to begin with, so one could, purely for the achievement, attempt to get a -3 post?

It's all a bit theoretical but, the effect isn't easily spotted, so could be bigger than sensed.

(p.s. I found that all SE sites have these achievements, is this meta still the right spot to post this? Or should this be on general Stack Exchange meta?)

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    This is a good question, however, I think this would be better suited on the general SE meta, as it is a SE wide query. I have flagged it for migration.
    – Greenonline
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 13:17
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    See Which meta am I supposed to post on? - it is fine to post here, and the SE team do read these posts. However if you (Paul) want me to I can migrate it.
    – Nick Gammon Mod
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 20:09
  • Peer pressure - I haven't felt motivated to try to earn that badge. ;)
    – Nick Gammon Mod
    Commented Feb 21, 2016 at 8:13

1 Answer 1

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I was going to make a comment as it was going to be a bit long.

This is more of a general SE meta topic seems all sites have these achievements available.

Also badges don't equate to privileges which are earned by making meaningful contribution to each SE site.

So if there are people who want to go around sites asking stupid questions or spamming unimportant questions or answers just to earn a badge they will probably be the ones who have a low rep keeping them away from established user privileges.

There is also a good side to the achievements as it gives the incentive to other users to participate in the site and feel like they have been commended for that involvement. For example

Vox Populi/Civic Duty (Use the maximum 40 votes in a day/ Vote 300 or more times)

This to me would make people want to show others that there are useful questions or answers on the site and cause that user to participate in site activities.

The one for giving someone a badge for a question with -3 votes I would think would be aimed at new users and others here and there so as to keep the site uncluttered from nonsense questions, thus another incentive to users or newbies to help keep the sites running smoothly.

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  • I agree that it's good when there will be more votes cast (I kinda have the feeling Arduino.SE has way less voting as on other SE's) but it shouldn't be because of an achievement. Your point of them not getting extra's, is very good though! You don't gain a lot, nor does the site loose a lot of value. Which isn't for the: "Delete a 3+ question", when I saw it, I thought: "Hey, I could just delete one of my old questions.", which would be against the principle of StackExchange.
    – aaa
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 14:14
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    My initial thought was, that more badges would equal "a better image" of my account. Though, having good questions in your "history" might be better than that extra badge ;)
    – aaa
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 14:15
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    @Paul the disciplined badge is quite odd, but only one person has it on Arduino.SE and 51 on EE.SE, and most are high rep users so they are not going to be spamming just to get badges. Stack exchange obviously saw the use of having such a badge, they have their view and many could have a different reason why that badge would be awarded.
    – RSM
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 15:12
  • Nice! Actual stats! I was scared that it might be an unnoticed issue. But 1 one whole Arduino.SE is not very worrying. The badge is odd indeed. But does not seem to lead to worrying behaviour :)
    – aaa
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 16:40

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