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Currently, the "Reversal" badge ("Provide an answer of +20 score to a question of -5 score") has been awarded 2 times. I was interested, so I went to see what kind of question/answer pairs these were, only to find out that both have been deleted.

Seeing as both cases where the badge applied have been deemed unfitting for the site, would it not make sense to disable the badge altogether? It fits into the same group as "Tenacious" and "Unsung Hero", which is the group of badges that make sense on SO, but are simply unobtainable by non-cheating means on Arqade.

If the badge is already disabled, this question becomes "why is there still a number of users with the badge if it's disabled?".

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The badges you mentioned are very much obtainable, but very difficult on Arqade as poor, but valid questions are rare and with 36 questions a day, the regulars (or at least I) often read or skim through majority of the new questions posted every day. Just because both of the current cases were deemed unfitting for the site doesn't mean future cases of downvoted questions will, not at all.

How do you pronounce Skyrim?* was closed and deleted 2 years after it was asked. There's even a lengthy meta about it, if you're interested: Are pronunciation questions out of scope?

is war really like this? [ Call of Duty ]* was just straight up off-topic, but got a good answer before it was closed just few hours later.

Being hard to acquire doesn't make the badge useless. It makes the badge rare, and that's not a bad thing. The only downside to reversal is that it slightly encourages answering off-topic questions, but that's not really a huge problem. If the answer is great despite being on an unfitting question, why not reward it?

* 10k required to view

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  • Fair enough. Thanks for the titles, even though i can't view the actual questions, they help in understanding this.
    – scenia
    May 28, 2014 at 11:16
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No.

For one: these two people who have the badge gave a very good answer to a really bad question. I wouldn't like it if they'd take that badge away from me. It can also happen a third time.

And two: the badges are identical over all SE sites, removing some badges specially for Arqade would be a stupid amount of work for something so extremely minor.

Unsung hero and the like are theoretically possible. I don't expect them to even be gotten on arqade though.

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  • Disabled badges are a thing... Also they gave that answer to a question so bad it was deleted. There's probably a reason for that. On SO, the badge is usually granted for very poorly written/worded, but valid questions if someone manages to understand the question and can provide a good solution.
    – scenia
    May 28, 2014 at 9:07
  • I can't see these deleted questions, but they could very well have stood for a rather long time. For example an identify-the-game question from before those were outlawed without picture. That then got deleted when they were cleaned up.
    – Arperum
    May 28, 2014 at 9:12
  • If the badges are unobtainable as per the current rules, my point stands.
    – scenia
    May 28, 2014 at 9:18
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    They are obtainable, it's not because they are stupid hard that they should be removed. Heck, analytical badge is unobtainable, and is not disabled/removed. All that happened is a badge text modification. The "be part of the area51 proposal" and "be part of the beta" badges aren't disabled either.
    – Arperum
    May 28, 2014 at 9:30

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