Able to earn 'Taxonomist' badge on own posts?
I went back over my posts here on askbot.org and added version-specific tags to each one where applicable.
When I came back to the homepage, I noticed that I had earned the 'Taxonomist' badge ("Created a tag used by 10 questions").
Should the requirements for the badge be changed to exclude a user's own posts and edits from counting toward the total?
There are two ways to "game the system" and acquire this badge without doing that much work:
- Simply add a new tag to 10 of one's own questions. Since there is no karma requirement for a user to edit her own posts, it is trivially easy to acquire this badge if one is reasonably active.
- Re-tag 10 questions posted by other users to add the new tag. This takes a little more work since it requires a certain amount of karma to retag others' questions (500 by default), but again, a reasonably active user could abuse her privileges to acquire this badge unjustly.
In what I would consider to be an ideal world, a user should only gain the Taxonomist badge if:
- She creates a new tag, and
- 10 other users then use that tag in at least one question each.
The description of the Taxonomist badge would then be changed to "Created a tag used by 10 other users" (or "10 other people", perhaps).
Comments
Is there not a possible "good" case where a user tags their own posts and it's of value to other people? Shouldn't the tagger be rewarded for doing this good?
Also my feeling is that people who find the need to game the system on a Q&A site really need to get out more.
The concern I have about gaming the system is that I'm planning on offering financial incentives for certain behaviors (e.g., free membership on a paid community).