Update ×2: implemented June 18, 2019
Update: declined, August 19, 2016
Michael Stum has been investigating the potential implementation of a more enlightened version of this badge, along the lines described in Ben Voigt's answer and discussed further below in this one.
Unfortunately, calculating the score of Q&A at various points in time makes the proposed replacement criteria too expensive to implement. Performing these calculations in a query requires walking the entire votes table, consuming large amounts of memory for most sites; this would put undue strain on the system. Tracking data for these separately would add an unacceptable level of complexity.
It's a nice idea; I wish we could do it. But it's not going to be possible, now or in the foreseeable future.
Original
I was kinda underwhelmed by this question discussion at first. I remember the discussion that originally suggested the Reversal badge (yes, way back in the User Voice days) - by the time the badge rolled out, the terrible question that inspired it had already been deleted! Even then, it was pretty obvious that earning this badge was gonna be like winning the lottery - a nice reward, but not really sensible to play for.
...Then I saw Ben Voigt's suggestion:
How about this: Reversal is changed to require that the question have -5 score when the answer is posted, the answer gets +20, and the question later (possibly with edits) reaches +5 score. These criteria should prevent it from ever being awarded for answering true garbage.
That... Sounds really cool. Especially since those criteria dovetail nicely with some other badges we recently rolled out. I had to see what it would actually turn up...
Run this code snippet to see the results:
<h2>Answers scoring >= 20 on questions scoring <= -5 when the answer was posted and now scoring >= 5</h2> <table><tr><th>Question Score</th><th>Answer Score</th><th>Answer Link</th><th>Answered</th><th>Current Reversal Badge</th></tr> <tr><td>31</td><td>40</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/17631035">Is there an opposite to display:none?</a></td><td>Jul 13 2013 2:22PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>5</td><td>27</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/17425080">can't convert Symbol into String</a></td><td>Jul 2 2013 12:00PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>89</td><td>168</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/14788468">How to install JDK on Ubuntu (Linux)?</a></td><td>Feb 9 2013 1:06PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>17</td><td>24</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/14414488">Why 0 ** 0 equals 1 in python</a></td><td>Jan 19 2013 12:43PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>69</td><td>145</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/12614698">What's the difference between MyISAM and InnoDB?</a></td><td>Sep 27 2012 5:33AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>7</td><td>48</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/11759800">Upload Android app to google play step by step...?</a></td><td>Aug 1 2012 12:57PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>14</td><td>23</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/11061352">How to get TimeZone from android mobile?</a></td><td>Jun 16 2012 6:25AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>5</td><td>25</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/10347205">Forecasting time series data</a></td><td>Apr 27 2012 8:20AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>11</td><td>21</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/9737529">How to Remove BOM from an XML file in Java</a></td><td>Mar 16 2012 12:48PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>30</td><td>66</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/9679614">Run an exe from C# code</a></td><td>Mar 13 2012 7:00AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>53</td><td>80</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/8928888">How to make a whole 'div' clickable in html and css without javascript?</a></td><td>Jan 19 2012 3:41PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>15</td><td>34</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/8882358">How to get the first element of the List or Set?</a></td><td>Jan 16 2012 3:41PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>10</td><td>26</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/8612289">Array of PHP Objects</a></td><td>Dec 23 2011 4:35AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>9</td><td>34</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/8188465">C++ warning C4018: '<' : signed/unsigned mismatch</a></td><td>Nov 18 2011 8:07PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>10</td><td>26</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/7058885">UIAlertView easy way to tell if cancel button is selected</a></td><td>Aug 14 2011 6:42PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>65</td><td>92</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/6413615">How to get last 4 character from a string in c#?</a></td><td>Jun 20 2011 3:25PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>18</td><td>53</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/6345011">Checking whether the string contains only a number value</a></td><td>Jun 14 2011 2:20PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>21</td><td>21</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/4093822">How to generate an array with random values, without using a loop?</a></td><td>Nov 4 2010 4:08AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>185</td><td>209</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/1047491">What is lexical scope?</a></td><td>Jun 26 2009 5:26AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>11</td><td>29</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/639196">Different ways of writing the "if" statement</a></td><td>Mar 12 2009 3:32PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>112</td><td>131</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/224626">How do you make div elements display inline?</a></td><td>Oct 22 2008 6:09AM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>22</td><td>24</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/179626">How can I convert VB6 code to C#?</a></td><td>Oct 7 2008 5:54PM</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td>20</td><td>20</td><td><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/q/121002">Any other mainframers here?</a></td><td>Sep 23 2008 1:30PM</td><td></td></tr> </table> 23 answers would be eligible to earn a badge with these criteria. Notice that none of those answers have currently earned a Reversal badge... So this does seem like a fairly meaningful change to the criteria.
That said, this looks like a really hard badge to earn. What if we change the question score requirements a bit?
- -4/+4 would qualify 63 answers for badges (though one of them already qualified for a Reversal badge under the current rules before it got upvoted)
- -3/+3 would qualify 176 answers, 3 of which previously qualified for Reversal
- -2/+2 qualifies 455 answers, 7 with existing Reversal badges
- -1/+1 qualifies 1633 answers, 10 with existing Reversal badges
If you're curious, the full results for -1/+1 can be found here: https://gist.github.com/Shog9/d8145de494c0a2d49ec5