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There are a few posts (here and here are two of them) that talk about earning the Peer Pressure badge. The requirements are quite simple:

Delete own post with score of -3 or lower.

This means, that, in order to earn this badge, we must create at least one poorly received question, and then delete it. This is, as others have pointed out before me, counter intuitive.

However, with this in mind, let's say I want to earn the badge, on purpose, as one of the linked questions pointed out in an answer (emphasis mine):

The peer pressure badge was originally designed to encourage a potentially good behavior; to reward users for deleting questions that might be poorly received and are perhaps unwelcome on the site. However, it can also paradoxically entice bad behavior by allowing achievement hunters to be rewarded for asking bad questions and then deleting them for a badge.

I concur the most with the final line of that answer:

The best way to earn the peer pressure badge is to not seek it in the first place.

This got me thinking though... I can imagine this has happened before, without prior questioning, and I can imagine that it might have induced a negative response for the user's experience as a whole.

Are there any adverse effects (outside of the negative impact to a user's reputation) to purposely earning the Peer Pressure badge?

  • If not, why?

Bonus question, are there any solid plans for the removal of the Peer Pressure badge?

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    "I can imagine this has happened before" -> Yup, sure has. While I don't have an definitive answer for your question, I have seen this happen a few times here in Arqade. When it's blatantly obvious somebody is trying to the Peer Pressure badge, the community does the exact the opposite: not downvote at all to prevent the user from getting what they want
    – Wondercricket
    Jun 30, 2021 at 18:18
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    @Wondercricket I could imagine that the most effective strategy would be to not vote at all correct? I can see someone newer to the community down-voting because they believe it needs it, then someone else coming along and up-voting to prevent it from reaching the desired -3 votes, but then they end up with +10 reputation. Double edged sword for any involved voting? Is there anything that prevents voting from working on a post such as that? Perhaps voting to close and flagging?
    – Hazel へいぜる
    Jun 30, 2021 at 18:27
  • I can see how there would be some abuse to the system in that scenario. However, 10 rep isn't going to do much to a users privilege. So I don't think there is too much to worry there :)
    – Wondercricket
    Jun 30, 2021 at 19:07

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There are no adverse effects to earning the Peer Pressure badge. With that said, the system does have automated systems for preventing users from asking or answering questions if they make an excessive amount of low quality contributions, which you can read more about here.

Additionally, if a moderator believes a user is making an excessive amount of low quality contributions just to game the system for badges then we'd likely step in with a warning, and potentially a suspension if the behaviour continued.

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