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Note: I am not referring to flagging; I am referring to voting to close a question. Who has the privilege to vote to close doesn't use flagging, except if the question is spam. The purpose of the proposed badge is not encouraging users to flag, but encouraging users to vote to close, which is quite different.

As incentive for voting to close questions, I was thinking of a badge given to the first user who votes to close, when X% of the questions s/he voted to close have been closed. For example, if only 10% of the questions the user voted to close are closed, then the badge should not be given to the user.

The badge could be an incentive to vote to close, but as the badge is given to the first user who votes to close, there should not be an increment of wrongly closed questions.

There could be a silver badge, and a gold badge.
I didn't think for how much closed questions the badge should be gained. To decide that, we should look at the number of questions a user normally vote to close, and how many of those questions are really closed.

If the definition of the badge is not too restrictive, then questions that are re-opened after Y days should not be considered.

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    But then there could be an increase of "trigger finger" voting, where people vote on any and all questions that look quetionable
    – simchona
    Aug 23, 2011 at 19:53
  • Only the first user who votes would candidate for the badge; the other four users that would be required to close a question would not have any reason to vote to close, if the question should not be closed.
    – apaderno
    Aug 23, 2011 at 21:19
  • So, you want to give a badge to the first person that flags it for deletion. Now let's just imagine all the new questions coming in: "Is the following sentence grammatically correct? 'Some sentence was placed here to act as a filler for something else.'" User that wants the so-called "litter picker" badge comes along. Flags for deletion. Earns "litter picker" badge. So what will happen if the question is actually a good question? Does the user only get the badge after the question is closed?
    – Klyzx
    Jul 25, 2015 at 13:38
  • @CaelanO'Toole No, the badge would be for the first user who votes to close a question, not that votes to delete it. I find difficult that somebody asks a friend to ask a question that surely will be closed, since the users who gets deleted questions are also blocked from asking further questions. I am not even talking of flagging, but voting.
    – apaderno
    Jul 25, 2015 at 14:08

2 Answers 2

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In general I worry about badges that encourage behaviours that make other people feel bad.

For example ... how about a badge for 1000 downvotes? Or a badge for successfully deleting N posts due to delete votes.

If we have a concrete problem where not enough stuff is getting closed, I could be persuaded. Though, I do worry about this kind of badge and possible dangers of abuse. I don't really want people grinding for such a badge.

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I already think more questions should be closed, so this is all grist to the mill for me. As I see it, more voting to close/reopen will help the community clarify and reach consensus on what type of Questions we actually want here.

I don't share @simchona's worries about a possible increase in "trigger finger" voting. If it did occur enough to be an issue, I guess I'd already be happy because the scatter-gun effect would also have shot down lots of the low-quality Questions that caused me to write my first sentence.

I assume the allocation rule would at least take account of total number of closevote 'firsts', and percentage of 'firsts' acted upon. That percentage should only consider the last 'n' votes (where 'n' is the qualifying total) so people can recover from excessive early zeal. If @simchona's point became a problem, it's easily countered by a negative bias against 'firsts' that were subsequently re-opened.

Perhaps the badge could be called Litter Picker!

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