Are there any rules regarding badge farming?

Question

Are there any rules regarding badge farming, either in this Ethereum Stackexchange site or general Stackexchange rules?

More concretely, I will provide two examples:

1) I have been editing empty tags in order to add information to them for future users to see. This accomplishes two goals—future users now have more context when using a tag and I have earned the Research Assistant tag.

2) I created the Talkative and outspoken chat channel that is meant to be used for members to chat. It may also provide a farming ground for the talkative and outspoken badges.

To me, scenario one is perfectly valid, as it is adding concrete value to the community. Scenario two is more questionable, in my opinion. Is scenario two valid? What are the rules around this?

Answer 1

Absolutely agree #1 is fine, in my opinion. (I approved all of your tag edits that I came across in the review queue.)

I think on certain levels Stack Exchange's reputation system is always going to have the potential to be gamed, with little recourse to preventing it from happening unless it's, a) obvious enough to annoy people to the extent that they report it, or b) obvious enough that it triggers Stack Exchange's detection mechanisms (as it does for suspicious voting patterns, etc.).

The fact that you're being open about what you're doing, with the side effect that you may get certain new badges, puts it on the right side of perceived fairness (again, in my opinion).

(A quick search on Stack Exchange's Meta doesn't throw up anything specific about farming.)

Answer 2

1. Looks good and seems to be the purpose of the badge incentive. Thanks for your additions!

2. I don't know what the rules around badge farming are. The chat you created looks OK. Only thing I might point out is that IIRC @5chdn (a previous moderator) created this Whisper chat a while ago: https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/34620/whisper (I don't see anything wrong with your attempt though.)