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Puzzling is a very unique site with a lot of really devoted users. You also run Puzzling Advent, which is an awesome community-building event. The amount of effort you put into the site is incredible, and we want to enable Puzzling’s moderators to reward participants when they go above and beyond, or stand out in the events you run.

We recently launched the Community Badges feature, which allows for communities to come together and propose badges that the Community team can create and moderators can award. We’d like to kickstart the ideation of what kinds of badges you might want here, so let’s dive in!

While the FAQ on Community Badges details the process in enhanced detail, the summary is that new badges have some fields that need to be filled out and earning criteria to think through carefully before a badge can be added. The fields are as follows:

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): The name of the badge. Should be short and ideally self-explanatory.
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): Specify the class for the badge. Remember that gold badges should be fairly rare!
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): The badge’s description, which should detail the criteria to earn the badge. Links are supported, so link to meta posts if relevant!
  4. Can it be awarded multiple times? (Yes or No): Default to yes, but this is an option we can control if desired.
  5. Criteria to earn: We should clearly define how a user would qualify to earn the badge. This can be subjective or objective, so long as it serves the community justly. Think it through carefully, but don’t let yourself be paralyzed or overwhelmed here. Badges are meant to be fun!

With that said, do any ideas come to mind for what sorts of badges you might want added? I know that an easy target is the Puzzling Advent that’s run every year, which bobble already beat me to the punch on, but we can go further here. You all know your needs, quirks, and specialties better than I do. You could even build out new events that revolve around these badges if the mods are on board; puzzles are year-round after all! These badges can target underrepresented activities on the site such as cleanup activities or above-and-beyond participation, so don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone!

Use this space as an opportunity to theorycraft or propose new badges directly. You can discuss with the mod team here if they’re comfortable with awarding the kind of badges you want to propose or if the community has any objections to ideas. Don’t be afraid to answer with just loose ideas; you can always transfer them to a proper proposal as a new meta question.

Think it through for a bit, and don’t be afraid to ping me in your main chatroom if you want some more real-time conversation or ideation!

New contributor
SpevacusStaffMod is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct.
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  • $\begingroup$ Hey Spevacus, thanks for dropping by our special little site :-) Mind if I slap the featured tag on this to get as much community input as possible? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 18:17
  • $\begingroup$ @Randal'Thor Slap away! $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 18:18

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Proposed badge: 'Generalist Asker'

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): Generalist Asker
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): Silver
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): Provide non-wiki questions of 15 total score in 20 of top 40 tags.
  4. Awardable Multiple Times? (Yes or No): No
  5. Criteria to Earn: The same as the existing Generalist badge, except for questions instead of answers. We'd probably want an SEDE query to make checking for awardees easy.

Notes

  • Unlike most sites on the network, the majority of questions on Puzzling are altruistic: the "asker" put in significant effort to create an original puzzle. Thus I feel it's appropriate to award askers with a badge like answerers.
  • I'm not going to put a requirement for originality, though; high-quality questions of other types (e.g. ) or sources (e.g. sharing interesting puzzles found elsewhere) are also of value to the site.
  • This would hopefully get folks to try their hand at creating a wider variety of puzzles.
  • Via SEDE query it would be easy to figure out who deserves this badge retroactively.
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  • $\begingroup$ Now this is an excellent idea. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28 at 12:53
  • $\begingroup$ I agree that puzzle-creation etc. should apply, but non-original puzzles should not (e.g. posting a crossword/sudoku/whatever that you found elsewhere). $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @GentlePurpleRain that would be difficult as it would require manually verifying the originality of each post (impossible via automated query) and people might just lie. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ Here's your SEDE query: data.stackexchange.com/puzzling/query/1934840/… $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @GentlePurpleRain oh, that would be an answer to meta.stackexchange.com/questions/417111/… -- though I'm surprised I'm not on it, since I thought I'd counted 21 tags for myself. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @bobble I updated the query to use total score of 15+ per tag, instead of an individual question with 15+ per tag. You are now on the list, with 21. Interestingly, I was at 20 before the change, and I'm still at 20 now. I guess that means I have at least one question with a score of 15+ in all 20 of those tags... $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
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Proposed badge: 'Quartermaster'

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): Quartermaster
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): Silver
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): Have a puzzle voted as the best puzzle of the quarter by the community
  4. Awardable Multiple Times? (Yes or No): Yes - but only one awarded per quarter (Multiple could be awarded per quarter if the vote ends in a tie)
  5. Criteria to Earn: The community runs an automatic quarterly vote - called the best-of series, in which people can submit other peoples puzzles which they think stood out that quarter. The community then votes on which puzzle was 'best' that quarter. The highest voted puzzle at the end of the quarter would receive the badge.

Notes

  • Name can be changed if a better fitting name is suggested - currently a play on the actual Quartermaster word
  • There is currently no prize for winning the best-of quarterly vote - and this could be the perfect chance to give some official recognition
  • This would hopefully incentivise both more higher-effort and high-quality puzzles with unique ideas, as well as also more participation in the quarterly vote, which sometimes won't get many submissions or votes
  • I think silver is a fitting class for the badge, as it is a pretty rare achievement with just 4 being award per year, but I could see with it being so rare that gold could also be fitting
  • It can also be awarded retroactively, as it is quite easy to go through the votes of previous best-of meta posts to see which puzzles previously would have qualified
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  • $\begingroup$ I was going to post the same idea, then saw that there was a new answer, and apparently "great minds think alike"! $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 19:40
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    $\begingroup$ The only concern I would have with this one is that sometimes the quarterly posts don't have many entries or many votes, which might cause mediochre puzzles to get a badge they don't deserve...? On the other hand, having a badge like this might draw a lot more attention to the quarterly posts, so... $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 19:42
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    $\begingroup$ @GentlePurpleRain haha, I think outside of advent this was the easy one, so swooped in quick :P I agree with that only concern, but I'd hope with something more on the line we'd get a couple more submissions/votes. At the moment there's not a huge amount of incentive, but I'd hope that there would be enough people were if this went through that if someone saw that there was for instance only one answer which was clearly underserving, people would find and submit deserving puzzles and vote on them. Could be good to get the engagement up! $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 19:45
  • $\begingroup$ Excellent idea! I wasn't even aware of your best-of series. What an awesome recurring event! $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 19:50
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    $\begingroup$ Mhh ... on the one hand, it's nice to give an extra reward for puzzles so good that they get voted as the best of the quarter ... on the other hand, I'm worried this might lead to people fiddling the vote just to get a badge :-/ $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28 at 9:52
  • $\begingroup$ @Randal'Thor I'd hope that wouldn't be the case, especially if only for a silver badge. I also think it would actually be quite hard to rig the vote - not sure how you would even do that outside of a lot of socks and I hope it would be quite obvious if that happened and easy to fix and award the rightful winner? Maybe my faith in the community is too high, but I'd like to think there would be very little rigging/that it wouldn't work anyway $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28 at 12:38
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Proposed badge: 'C-Force'

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): C-Force
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): Bronze/Silver
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): Participate in the Cryptic Clue Chat Chains (CCCC) by setting x clues.
  4. Awardable Multiple Times? (Yes or No): No
  5. Criteria to Earn: Set 1 Clue (Bronze), Set 50 Clues (Silver),

Notes

  • The badge name can be changed; especially if this is going to become 3 badges, where we would need a name for each badge.
  • Considering the CCCC is what I believe to be one of the highlights of Puzzling, and one of the more unique collaborations I've ever seen, I think it warrants it's own badge.
  • It can also be awarded retroactively, as it should be relatively simple to go back in chat and collect statistics like this, considering we have Archive & Statistics composed by some avid chat users.
  • This would hopefully incentivise more people to participate not only in the CCCC but also in chat in general, and also reward users for their excellent quality and participation.
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  • $\begingroup$ I was planning to propose that with the bronze as "Cryptic Clue Chat Contributor" (i.e. C4), the silver as "Cryptic Clue Chat Chaining Champion" (i.e. C5), and no gold. I don't think it's appropriate to have a gold badge accessible via only chat participation. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 22:32
  • $\begingroup$ It might be worth checking how many CCCC's various individuals have posted. 150 seems low for a gold badge. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 22:32
  • $\begingroup$ @bobble You could always set additional criteria for the gold (or all of them), like "must have at least X reputation" or "must have posted X well-received questions and/or answers". $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 22:33
  • $\begingroup$ @GentlePurpleRain but then the badge is being rewarded for non-C4 things. I still think that one bronze and one silver is plenty. (Which means that I can't vote on this answer right now -- I'd do +1 for the bronze/silver and -1 for the gold) $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 23:20
  • $\begingroup$ I've removed the gold badge request, so now it's only bronze/silver. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 23:44
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Proposal: Tag Badges for Askers

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): either "Asker Tag Badge" or (preferred, if possible) "TagName Asker", with a different badge name for each tag where this is earned.
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): all three! Or, if it's going to be too big a job to create so many badges for individual tags, we could make this just gold, or just silver and gold.
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): Earn at least [100 / 400 / 1000] total score for at least [20 / 80 / 200] non-community-wiki questions in the TagName tag.
  4. Can it be awarded multiple times? (Yes or No): either yes (if we have a single tag name "Asker Tag Badge" covering all tags) or no (if we have individual badge names for each tag where this is earned).
  5. Criteria to earn: pretty clear, exactly the same as the existing tag badge system except for questions rather than answers.

Notes

  • The big question here is, can we have separate badges for "riddle asker" and "mathematics asker" and "logical-deduction asker" and so on? Or should we roll them all into a single multiply-awardable "asker tag badge"?
  • The criteria are clear and objective. A single SEDE query should be able to give a complete list of everyone who's earned each of these badges.
  • The motivation for this is similar to the Generalist Asker proposal. Here on Puzzling, questions often require more creativity and ingenuity than answers, so it's not fair that we only give tag badges to people who answer a lot in a given tag.
  • I've checked our top 40 tags and, at least among them, only 7 gold "asker tag badges" would be awarded: 1 in mathematics, 2 in knowledge, 1 in enigmatic-puzzle, 1 in visual, 1 in geography, 1 in cryptic-crosswords. Among the same top 40 tags, we'd have 30 silver "asker tag badges" awarded altogether: 5 in , 6 in , 2 in , 1 in , 4 in , 2 in , 1 in , 2 in , 2 in , 1 in , 1 in , 1 in , 1 in , 1 in . I don't know how many bronze "asker tag badges" we'd be awarding, but if it's too many, we could restrict this proposal to just silver/gold.
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Proposed badge: 'Wrapper'

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): Wrapper
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): Silver
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): Post a wrap-up "Making of" answer to your own puzzle with score of 5 or more
  4. Awardable Multiple Times? (Yes or No): Yes
  5. Criteria to Earn: Post a well-received "Making of" wrap-up of an original puzzle, explaining the process of creating it.

Notes

  • Some folks interact with this site primarily through creating high-quality original puzzles. We want to encourage them to share how those puzzles are made. This is why our site approved "Making of" answers as an explicit exception to the "answers are for answers" guideline.
  • There are currently 65 "making of" answers, of which 40 have score +5.
  • This is vaguely patterned off of the Necromancer badge which provides a silver for a +5 answer that fulfills an extra-special need. In that case, the answer must be provided two months after the question was posted (thus reviving an old Q), and in this case the asker has to write up a thoughtful, informative explanation of the puzzle creation process.
  • I particularly wanted to make a way to give good askers more silver badges; an answer can get a silver for just being first and voted +10, but there isn't an easy way for a question to earn a silver.
  • One might object that this would lead to too many low-quality Making Of posts, but a) I think those are unlikely to net the +5 required and b) we don't have all that many in the first place.
  • This badge would be relatively easy to award retroactively via a simple site search.
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    $\begingroup$ Eeeh I'm not so sure on this one. A making of is a pretty rare and unique scenario for specific puzzles which have some interesting element in creation, and usually only happen when someone/mutliple people specifically ask the OP to give an insight into the creation process. I think that's how it really should be, and this would encourage a bunch of making-ofs for puzzles that really don't need it. I like the idea, but I think it might incentivise it in a bad way. Personally I think a bunch more making-ofs would saturate the point of them a bit $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28 at 21:05
  • $\begingroup$ @BeastlyGerbil fair enough. I was trying to figure out how to award good making-ofs, but it might be hard to do that without also encouraging bad ones. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 28 at 21:37
  • $\begingroup$ @BeastlyGerbil Part of the purpose of "making-of" posts is to explain the puzzle creation process, but another part is to provide a mechanism for good question askers to receive more reputation (because they can get upvotes for the "making-of" answer as well as for the question. I think that bad/badge-mongering "making-of" posts would not receive many upvotes and wouldn't meet the criteria. There is already a reputation incentive for these posts, and yet we don't see a lot of bad ones. I don't think a badge incentive would change that. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ I might raise the criteria to a score of +10. That is around 25 existing answers. Seems more appropriate for a Silver badge. Or make it bronze instead. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ Specifically, +10 would mean 17 existing answers. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
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Badge Name: Metamagical Thema

Badge Class

Bronze/Silver/Gold

Description

PSE is blessed with puzzle setters who love grand designs and will take the time to design long sequences of themed puzzles before capping the sequence with a final meta-puzzle. These take a great deal of dedication and are a highpoint of the site for many of us. This badge would mark a long series (Bronze/Silver/Gold levels) of high quality puzzles. Examples might include Stivial pursuit and Gladys.

Awarded Multiple Times

Sure

Criteria to earn

At least five (bronze), ten (silver) or twenty (gold) puzzles with a linking theme, each scoring above 5 votes, capped by a final meta-puzzle.

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  • $\begingroup$ You might need to define "linking theme" a bit more rigorously. If I post 10 puzzles about rabbits, is that a "linking theme"? What if they're all chess puzzles? I would maybe say something about "story" or "meta" when describing it...? "An overarching theme that links all the puzzles into a story, with the story's final resolution in the final metapuzzle" <-- something like that, maybe? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 19:45
  • $\begingroup$ As a badge name, I would propose "meta-tastic" (play on metastatic / meta + fanTASTIC). Or "theme-meta-ic"? Ok, no more puns. But the first one is serious. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 27 at 19:50
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This might be controversial, and that's OK. I think it's a good idea fundamentally, but figuring out the best way to award it might be tricky. Please comment with critiques and/or suggestions on how this could work.
This is inspired by this answer in a discussion of how to reward and encourage more high-quality puzzle questions on the site.

Proposal: Exemplary Question Badge

  1. Badge Name (25 characters): Praiseworthy Question (bronze) / Emblematic Question (silver) / Exemplary Question (gold)
  2. Badge Class (Bronze, Silver, Gold): All three
  3. Badge Description (200 characters): Earn at least [10 / 30 / 60]* total score (and at least 10x* more upvotes than downvotes) on a Puzzling Meta post nominating your question for "exemplary" status.
  4. Can it be awarded multiple times? (Yes or No): Yes, whenever a nominated question receives the required number of votes.
  5. Criteria to earn: Anyone can post a meta question nominating a question for "exemplary" status. If receives the required score outlined above, it receives the badge. The meta post must explain how the puzzle excels in each of the following categories (can be tweaked/added to):
    • Originality/Creativity - What sets it apart from other puzzles? Is there something that hasn't been seen before, or a new way of using a puzzle mechanic?
    • Engagement - How does the puzzle draw you in, and keep you engaged until you solve it? What makes it fun?
    • Satisfaction - Does the puzzle give you a satisfying feeling when you get to the solution? Do you feel like the parts fit together cleanly, and there are no loose ends or unresolved questions?

*numbers can be tweaked as needed

Notes

  • This is in some way similar to the proposed "Quartermaster" badge, but rather than picking out the best puzzle of the quarter (which could have had no good puzzles), it is meant to reward truly exceptional puzzles.
  • The meta post nominating the question would need to have a template.
  • The criteria might need to be tweaked to reflect the current activity on meta. It's possible that the numbers would need to change over time if activity increases or decreases significantly. (In the future, if meta answers are regularly getting 50+ score, then the gold badge as defined here would be too easy to get).
  • There is potential for abuse. People could share the meta post widely, encouraging people to vote for them. Perhaps this could be mitigated by only counting votes from users with a certain amount of reputation, or users who have voted on the orginial question, or users who have been active on the site in the last x days...
  • Maybe there is an entirely different/better way of determining what is an "exemplary question". I know that there are a few questions on the site that almost everyone would agree deserve the title and some sort of recognition (some of Alconja's top questions come to mind).
  • I would love a badge that I could click on to discover a list of truly exceptional, well-thought-out, engaging, creative puzzles. The question is, how do we determine which puzzles get that designation?

Discuss. What is the best way to make this badge feasible?

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  • $\begingroup$ There's no way for anyone except developers to get a list of users who voted on a specific post. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @bobble Good point. This is a bit of a brainstorming post. I like the concept, but I need feedback on how it could be implemented effectively. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
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    $\begingroup$ It might work better to simply have a centralized meta question where people could nominate exceptional puzzles as answers, and then regularly (e.g. once a quarter) promote it in the sidebar. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @bobble I like that idea, although it feels like it would overlap more with the quarterly posts. But I guess the difference is that the "exemplary" one wouldn't have a time limit. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday

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