Earn the Electorate Badge in January 2016 and get

Question

This may be a little bit different, but I'm willing to put up a bounty to any user on here to earn the Electorate Badge in the month of January of 2016. The rules are simple and there are only two:

• Earn the badge during the month of January
• Have at least one answer on any question (needed to award the points*)

I am willing to put up 100xp of my points to anyone who makes the grade. You don't even have to acknowledge you are shooting for this ... just show up and vote. You can keep track of how many votes you've cast by looking at the bottom of your user page under the activity tab:

This is the number you're looking at and it needs to equal 600. When you upvote a question this number will increase. (If you are wondering, this is from my user page from today.)

So basically how do you get it? Upvote questions and it's all yours. Let's get out the vote!! :D

*NOTE: Please make sure your answer I award on is a good one ... if you only have a crap answer, I'll hold the points until you have a good one worthy of the points :-)

Answer 1

I really like your idea for two reasons:

1. The giving of more upvotes will increase everybody's reputation so they get more privileges. Specifically, new-comers will be able to vote (which is engaging) much easier if more upvotes are being passed around.

2. The act of repeatedly coming to this site and voting (at least 15 days of the max 40 votes per day) gets users in the habit of coming here.

I'm worried about your idea because:

1. It's giving questions like this two upvotes in just a few hours:

• Except for a particular quirk of the 2007 CR-V (unspecified motor), we can't answer this. I don't think it should be downvoted or closed, just not upvoted until the OP has put in some more work and added some detail. Caveat: Upvote if you are someone in the future who is also experiencing this exact issue (not in 18 hours).

I just worry that we'll be giving basically anyone who visits the site the ability to vote before they've exemplified to us that they are even slightly literate about motor vehicle maintenance and repair.

P.S. I realize that @Paulster2 and @JonEricson are planning for the upcoming moderator election when our site "graduates". Do we really want brand new users (without a good feel for the current site and the big players here) to be a large factor in deciding what's best for the future of this site? This would be great if it were several months before the elections to engage new users and get them to stick around and develop that feel for the site.

P.P.S. I don't think my opinion here is the smartest or worth much, I just wanted to point out a couple things. Thank you for trying to make this place better @Paulster2, @DucatiKiller, @Zaid, @vini_i, et. al.

Answer 2

As a quick followup, this initiative seems to be working (at least in regards to increased voting):

Often increases in voting are a function of increased posting. But that does not seem to be the case this time:

(Interactive versions of these charts are available to all 5k users.)

There is also a noticeable increase in users participating this month even after adjusting for the usual drop in activity around the December holidays. So far, so good.