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Update: not all badges in the the list of badges are trackable in the badge tab of your profile - so badges that don't show up in the badges tab can still be earned (with few exceptions)

I noticed that some badges that have been awarded in the past at CV seem to not be available any more (e.g. the "Unsung hero" badge). As mentioned e.g. in this answer such badges would be beneficial for some types of questions, as the CV community is smaller than e.g. the SO community, and questions receive very different attention.

Further, I believe it would also just be more fun to track some of the "more weird" or "anti-badges", especially like "Unsung hero". I believe the keyword is gamification (see e.g. this question and its answers/comments) - something our community could benefit a lot from my point of view, especially in times where more and more people have an idea of data analysis and machine learning, and which could therefore find CV an attractive community. We all see that this works well, especially for SO, where people love collecting them (note that e.g. the excerpt of badges displayed to a profile visitor are the "3 rarest" the user has...).

My questions would be now:

  • What is the reason that some badges previously awarded are no longer available? What happened?
  • Would there be support for introducing some more badges and (re)inventing some of the previously existing ones (including the "more weird" ones like "Unsung hero"?). Why/why not?
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    $\begingroup$ These are really questions for the main Meta site, not here, because they affect all of SE. The answer to the first bullet is evolution: some badges have been replaced by others or found not to be productive. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 21:05
  • $\begingroup$ OK, but badges can be different for SE subsites, right? Couldn't the CV community introduce a badge that does not exist on (all) other sites? It could also semantically make sense to have different badges IMHO. $\endgroup$
    – geekoverdose
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 21:14
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    $\begingroup$ I believe the badges (except of course tag badges) & the criteria for being awarded them are the same across Stack Exchange: see:Do we have different badges in different SE sites. $\endgroup$
    – Scortchi Mod
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 21:50

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As far as I know, almost all the badges are still earnable. The rare exceptions are Precognitive, Beta, and Analytical. That is, the Unsung Hero badge can still be earned.

However, not all badges are trackable from your profile page. As @whuber notes, these issues are covered on meta.SE. You can find a list of badges that cannot be tracked in this thread: Why aren't all the badges shown on the track menu?

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  • $\begingroup$ OK, now that makes things a bit clearer. Taking the "Unsung Hero" as example, which only 4 people earned so far on CV: my gut feeling would tell me that this is very low for such requirements, but it seems to be wrong: this badge has been awarded last time on 4. June this year, right? $\endgroup$
    – geekoverdose
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 22:19
  • $\begingroup$ @geekoverdose, yes, it appears it was last awarded June 4. It is a very hard badge to 'earn'. Many OPs ask questions & don't accept answers. Most answers that are worthy get at least 1 upvote. You need a topic that most people don't pay attention to so that good answers aren't upvoted & you need OPs who do accept but don't have enough reputation to upvote themselves. It's a strange situation (& a rather strange badge). $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 22:34
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, thinking about the requirements of "Unsung Hero" again, I might have underestimated them at first. OPs are likely even more frequent on SO, which would explain why it was earned >10K times there. Thanks for clarifying - it's good to know that "gamification is still on at its brightest" at CV ;) $\endgroup$
    – geekoverdose
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 22:46
  • $\begingroup$ @gung I am now an unsung hero myself and currently there have been 16 awarded. The requirements are more stringent than at first blush and there is software for checking on progress on that. The badge is not so strange for people who direct their answers to helping newbie OPs with simple questions with answers edifying for the newbie but boring for the expert. I like helping. Makes me feel good. $\endgroup$
    – Carl
    Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 1:09
  • $\begingroup$ Congratulations, @Carl. It's good that there are users like you who are helping such OPs. Not all questions have to be enticing to be of concrete value. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica Mod
    Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 2:01

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