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I've noticed the new Announcer, Booster and Publicist badges and I like the idea. But I'm wondering if they apply to links used in comments for possible duplicates (and in the subsequent possible duplicate links inserted in a closed question).

In other words, I'm wondering if they somehow also encourage finding duplicates and closing questions as such or actually discourage this behavior even more than it currently is, which would be a nasty side effect (I really think that duplicates generate noise and should be hunted).

Are those badges also an answer to the question below, or not at all?

Am I worrying too much?

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1 Answer 1

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I guess, if we introduced voting on linked questions (eg. I agree this question should be linked) then I guess we could introduce a badge for proposing lots of good links.

The problem is that having yet another area for meta voting could introduce unnecessary noise and complexity.

The Booster et. el. badges are not intended for internal "dupe hunting" and in fact we will probably strip out the ref if this becomes a problem. The intention is to help us promote great questions externally.

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They can also be a good incentive to post citations or reference links in answers, which can help people decide whether the answer is good and sound or whether the poster was just being really good at talking through a hole in their @#$%. –  slugster Sep 8 '10 at 6:41
Thanks for the answer. But while I understand the intention, I'm still worried by the side effects. We'll see. –  Pascal Thivent Sep 8 '10 at 20:19
Excuse my ignoranc,e but how will I paste a link somewhere so that it identifies me when it's followed to SO. –  Lance Roberts Sep 8 '10 at 23:34
@Lance The link at the bottom of a question includes your userid now. –  Pascal Thivent Sep 8 '10 at 23:40
@Pascal, thanks. –  Lance Roberts Sep 9 '10 at 0:02

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