badge reporting seems broken

Question

This morning I was greeted with an announcement that I've earned the "Excavator" badge (and four others), but I haven't -- I didn't edit the post it said I did, and these other four aren't listed. When I looked more closely at my profile I noticed that the count in the header (next to my name) reports 19 badges but my profile reports 15. (The latter is correct -- or 14 would be once "Excavator" is removed.)

I was away from my computer for about a week and a half, so I don't know when the count changed. I haven't been paying a lot of attention to badges, so I don't know if there have been other anomalies.

Answer 1

The Excavator badge is new, and has been awarded retroactively to whomever appropriate. That's why you got it now for an old post (which you did, in fact, edit, even if you don't remember having done so).

As to the "four others", I got the same message, and it was false w.r.t. me, too. According to Nick Craver, it's because of this bug (viz, the four others you got were also Excavator badges, later withdrawn).

The discrepancy in count between the header and the truth is also related to that bug, and should correct itself next time you get a badge, as described in a comment on an answer there.