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Whenever I find a that takes a while to understand or has a poor title I'll edit it after I post my answer. I find myself doing this quite a lot so out of interest I started tracking the illuminator badge.

What I've noticed is that if I've edited and answered a post and then somebody re-edits the answer that my original edit will no longer count towards illuminator. It seems the only way to get the badge is if you have the last accepted edit on a question, as well as an answer.

Is this by design?

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Without having inside knowledge of the mechanics behind it, this behaviour seems reasonable. The system isn't smart enough to know if someone else has edited your question to correct grammar or to fix an inconsistency. So if your question has been edited by someone else, then there was someone who felt that your answer needed modifying and the system has take worst case scenario.

Given the quality of most of your answers, I would suggest that this badge will fall soon enough for you. Patience! :)

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  • (Oh, and I don't have this badge yet :) ) – Jane S Nov 13 '15 at 1:08
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    But the system tracks revision history, so it ought to be able to know about the edit (editor and timestamp). If you improved a post and then somebody made it even better, why would that count against you? We'll have to wait for somebody from SE to weigh in, I suspect. – Monica Cellio Nov 13 '15 at 2:51
  • @MonicaCellio hit the nail on the head. I'm not expecting the badge anytime soon but I also wouldn't expect the counter on it to go down when somebody further edits an improvement that I've made (which is the current behavior it seems). – Michael A Nov 13 '15 at 3:40
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    I think it is more that the system is unable to tell if your edit was revised because it was not a great edit or just because more things needed to be added after. – IDrinkandIKnowThings Nov 13 '15 at 19:55
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    @Chad If that were the case, I think a good distinguisher would be whether it was a rollback or new edit that changed your revisions. I would be surprised if it tracked at this level though. – David K Nov 13 '15 at 20:01
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    @DavidK - I am sure we could come up with some determination factor. I think we edit alot more often than SO on SO this is less likely to be an issue. Its going to be a effort vs reward to change for SE I would guess. – IDrinkandIKnowThings Nov 13 '15 at 20:02
  • @Chad I likely edit more than most at the moment and I've found that it is very rare on this site for a post to undergo a single edit. Many go through three or even more revisions. I think it's normal for more essay rather than code based questions. The badge doesn't really appear to fit this context. – Michael A Nov 14 '15 at 2:05
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    @Codingo - I would say that is true, that most posts here undergo multiple edits. These badges are basically the legacy of Stack Overflow. I seriously doubt that SE will address the issue to make it more attainable on the SE sites. However the place to address that would be meta.stackexchange.com this meta is for addressing The Workplace issues, as our mods can not change the programming of the site. – IDrinkandIKnowThings Nov 16 '15 at 15:33
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From the badge page:

Illuminator Edit and answer 500 questions (both actions within 12 hours, answer score > 0).

This means that you have to edit the question (ostensibly with improvements) within 12 hours of answering.

According to this query, which is supposed to be the rough approximation of the actual query, you're not even on the map yet.

Good luck getting it, though.

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  • Not expecting to be on the map yet but I have noticed that the count in general has been going down when somebody edits a question after I have. – Michael A Nov 13 '15 at 3:30
  • @Codingo it looks like only 3 people on the site (you, Chad, and me) are even above 20. – enderland Nov 23 '15 at 14:24
  • @enderland Which is kind of the crux of my argument. The reason this count is so low is because if another editor comes along after you then that number would drop to 19. If it weren't flawed in design then I think these numbers would be telling a very different story. – Michael A Nov 24 '15 at 0:31

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