Yearling badges being given too often

Question

I've gotten the yearly badge 4 times in the last few months:

• 7 hours ago
• Jul 15 at 22:06
• Jun 10 at 22:37
• May 6 at 23:26

I think the problem is that I was largely inactive for several years and so did not earn the required 200 reputation and therefore no badge. Since the spring I have earned the required 200 reputation to catch up for the years I didn't do much and the calculation appears to be confused.

Answer 1

This is by design. Per the SE Meta answer for participation badges List of all badges with full descriptions:

Yearling

• silver; awarded multiple times
• Have a reputation of at least (number of years since registration) × 200 + 1 (starting reputation)
  • The number of years is not restricted to integers and increases continuously. For example, if at the 2-year mark you don’t have the 400 required reputation, the number of years still continues to increase. So half way through year 3 (i.e., after 2.5 years), you’d need 2.5 × 200 = 500 reputation to qualify for the second yearling badge.
  • If at any point you qualify for this year’s badge, you will receive all badges you had previously missed up until this year whenever the script runs again.
  • The badge used to require only (years) × 100 reputation; this was changed after the account association bonus was implemented

Since your account is 5 years old, breaking the 1K mark has awarded you this year's badge as well as the previous 4 years.