Perhaps someone with skills on the data site could write a script to give us hard facts? Still noteworthy all except one of the examples you brought had it awarded under 10 times, most only 2 or 3

@RabbiKaii Gold badges are expected to be rare. They shouldn't be being awarded as much on a smaller as SO, because SO is hundreds of times larger

Fair enough - so you agree that the badge has become more of a site comparator rather than a user one? And you are saying you hold that's not an issue?

@RabbiKaii No. Just about every badge will be earned more on larger sites because there are simply more users to potentially earn it. Its not a site comparator. Its roughly just as hard to get Legendary on SO as much of the network, but there are more users on SO, so even with the same chance per user of getting the badge SO would have hundreds of times the amount of badges

You are welcome to have your opinion and I appreciate you clarifying it but I still think you are wrong about one thing: it is comparatively harder to get it too. The amount of upvotes an answer can expect to get relative to its quality goes up when there are more users. Therefore the overall relative percentage of users with it is much less on smaller sites. This makes it a site comparator too. You have at least made me change my mind to a degree - it's more a user comparator than I initially gave it credit for

@RabbiKaii I disagree that its comparatively harder. Let's look at, out of users with 30k rep (200x150, needed to get this badge), what percent have Legendary. Currently, SO has 7270 such users. 313 of them have the Legendary badge, so 4.3% or so. Meanwhile, the Workplace has 54 users over 30k rep, and 16 of them have the badge, so 29.6% or so. Its actually much easier to get on the Workplace, just SO has more users.

That fact defies logic so therefore I assume it is caused by secondary issues such as previous popularity vs now, culture, or other things. I could be assuming wrong though but I need to understand this better because it seems obvious that more users = more upvotes = more likely to get 200 reputation for exact same level of quality

@RabbiKaii No. Becuase it also means more posts, meaning your post is less likely to get viewed rather than the tens of millions of other posts. And this pattern holds up on other sites (11.9% on Worldbuilding, 36.4% on Law, 16% on Puzzling, 12.5% on Japanese Language, 8% on Personal Finance and Money, 21.4% on Space Exploration)

I was just editing that idea in. Sites can get TOO big. It's a multivariate problem for sure

10% on Movies & TV, and 10.3% on Aviation. @RabbiKaii Honestly, SO seems like the hardest site to get this badge on :)

How about checking how hard it is to get it per user? How many answers did these users have to give to get it? How about not comparing to SO which might be it's own problem. I think we need some good data analysis but I see that you could very well have defeated my point. I might still have some point left

The issue with per user checks is that many users never contribute anything, or anything substantial. Those users vastly outnumber the ones who contribute a lot, enough to get that amount of reputation/ the badge

The next largest site in the network is Math, which has 401 30k+ users and 39 with the legendary badge, so 9.7%

Which is on the low end of the other sites I mentioned. Definetly not much easier

After math, the next largest site is Super User, with 71 30k+ users and 2 legendary badges, so 2.8%

You might wish to consider making a post here, up to you: judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5647/…

@RabbiKaii Done, see judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5702/32464

@StarshipRemembersShadow thanks, and please also see my edit to the original meta post