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Every time I notice the following suggestion, I get slightly amused:

Suggestion on how to earn your first gold badge

You don't have a gold badge yet. Write an answer that scores 100 or more to earn your first.

I think this is not helpful advice at all, and even comes off slightly derisive, especially on smaller sites (perhaps anything smaller than StackOverflow, actually).
With my entire, more than 3-years old network profile, I have received just one of these Great Answer badges, and it was certainly not my first.

There are gold badges that are arguably easier to obtain (e.g. the Fanatic, Copy Editor, Electorate, and Steward badges do require much more time, but are guaranteed and can even be tracked).

Wouldn't it be better if this 'advice' were changed, or at least randomized, that upon visiting your profile this message would be randomly selected from the pool of gold badge descriptions?

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    It’s unlikely that “Fanatic” is chosen as the example description since it uses a “potentially toxic metric”. Other than that, you’re right. Marshal is probably also relatively easy to get, especially on Meta Stack Exchange where lots of spam and off-topic questions get posted every day. Commented Feb 20, 2022 at 10:39
  • @SebastianSimon since this is shown to every user including new users, possibly only badges related to asking/answering/editing are applicable from the start. Marshal, while relatively easy, needs 15 reps to flag. Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 2:09
  • Actually the suggestion is misleading. A few days ago I got 115 points on a bountied question. No gold badge materialized. There must be some additional constraint. Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 8:48
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    @Andrea A "score of a 100" is actually a 100 upvotes, resulting in 1000 reputation points :) A 115 suggest 10 upvotes and acceptation of the answer (worth 15 points).
    – Joachim
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 8:53
  • @Joachim Thanks, that clarifies the issue! Still, the bounty is assigned on the basis of 1 upvote (i.e. the acceptance vote of the bounty setter). One may still wonder whether a 1000 bounty yields a gold badge. Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 9:08

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