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I just received seven Announcer badges in math.se (plus one in MathOverflow) ... Coincidence? Was the method of computing them changed? A whole bunch of people suddenly followed all my links?

Announcer: Share a link to a post later visited by 25 unique IP addresses

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    $\begingroup$ I also received 13 badges simultaneously (6 in Mathoverflow, 7 in MSE, at the same time.) $\endgroup$ – Hanul Jeon Dec 13 '19 at 4:44
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    $\begingroup$ FWIW I earned 39 Announcer badges and 2 Booster badges :-/ $\endgroup$ – Jyrki Lahtonen Dec 13 '19 at 11:59
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    $\begingroup$ I got 43 yesterday, and four "booster" yesterday, and another one of each today. $\endgroup$ – MJD Dec 13 '19 at 14:05
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    $\begingroup$ I've never understood the Announcer, Booster and Publicist badges. What is meant by sharing a link? $\endgroup$ – Peter Phipps Dec 13 '19 at 15:20
  • $\begingroup$ @PeterPhipps If you click on "share" in a question or answer you get a link which is unique to you, and SE counts the number of "hits" on that (essentially identical) page. For example, if I click "share" on this question I get the link math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/31007/10513, which is the question ID https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/31007/ followed by my user ID 10513. So when you click on "share" the URL you get should be math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/31007/15984, as your user ID is 15984. $\endgroup$ – user1729 Dec 13 '19 at 15:33
  • $\begingroup$ @user1729, thanks very much. $\endgroup$ – Peter Phipps Dec 13 '19 at 15:43
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Some people wondered about the same question also on Meta Stack Exchange: What's going on with the Announcer badge?, Suddenly getting “Announcer” badges every few minutes?

Recently, some bug was fixed in the procedure that calculated number of visits for purposes of the publicity badges (Announcer, Booster, Publicist). More details are available here: Missing publicist badge? (It seems that problem was with the way links to answers were counted. As the linked post explains, you could now even get several badges for the same question - for example, if you shared both link to the question and also link to an answer. Or links to two different answers.)

This explains why some people received badges now - after the number of visitors from their links has been recalculated. (It seems that Announcer is much more common, but also some Booster and Publicist badges have been awarded recently.)

In some cases, I have got badges for some questions and I do not remember where I shared them. But I'm not really going to lose my sleep over that. (However, if links from chat, meta and the main site do count towards these badges, that would explain some of the cases where I got announcer badge. And it seems that they count at least sometimes, see: I received the Announcer badge for a link to a site-meta shared on a hot network question and Do shared link to ANSWERS also count for Announcer, Booster, Publicist badges? Typically when I post some link inside the Stack Exchange network, I usually post the version of the URL without my user id at the end - but it's quite possible that sometimes I have forgotten to do this.)

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  • $\begingroup$ ah. That explains everything, thanks Martin $\endgroup$ – Bellatrix Dec 13 '19 at 1:57
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, I found out yesterday that I forgot to remove my user id from the link at least twice :( $\endgroup$ – Daniel Fischer♦ Dec 13 '19 at 12:12
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    $\begingroup$ @DanielFischer Bookmarklet called "Formatted link to a webpage" from NormalHuman's bookmarklet is useful to get short link without user id. Here is Wayback Machine and also links to various bookmarklets. $\endgroup$ – Martin Sleziak Dec 13 '19 at 12:15
  • $\begingroup$ It's just six backspaces to remove it, and I mostly link to the question anyway when I post a link, so I'd say it's not worth the effort. But good to know where to find if needed, thanks. $\endgroup$ – Daniel Fischer♦ Dec 13 '19 at 12:20
  • $\begingroup$ @DanielFischer well, the bookmarklet does a bit more than that. It gives me the link of the form [title](url) with the title of the question, or [selection](url) if I selected some text on the page. For example, if I use it on this question, I get: [Change in computation of “Announcer” badges?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/31007) However, it has trouble with titles containing MathJax. (In such cases, I select them first.) Anyway, we can discuss this further in chat if needed. $\endgroup$ – Martin Sleziak Dec 13 '19 at 12:28

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