I came across a user with low rep but a gold famous question badge and was curious. It seems his question (the only one he has) was marked as a duplicate of the actual famous question.

This seems to be some kind of loophole. His question had a relatively low number of views and clearly not enough for the famous question badge.

Steps (this is by no means an encouragement to do the same):

1. find a famous question
2. make a new question asking essentially the same thing
3. get your question marked as a duplicate of the famous question
4. get a nice shiny gold badge

Is this intentional?

Besides good ethics/morals, whats stopping anyone from doing this exact same thing to get undeserved badges?

I came across a user with low rep but a gold famous question badge and was curious. It seems his question (the only one he has) was marked as a duplicate of the actual famous question.

This seems to be some kind of loophole.

Steps (this is by no means an encouragement to do the same):

1. find a famous question
2. make a new question asking essentially the same thing
3. get your question marked as a duplicate of the famous question
4. get a nice shiny gold badge

Is this intentional?

Besides good ethics/morals, whats stopping anyone from doing this exact same thing to get undeserved badges?

Edit: This is not as severe as I thought. The question in question actually does have enough views to be a famous question though it may be entirely due to the fact that it was marked as a duplicate to a famous and well rated question. By chance or not, I suppose this sort of this is most likely frowned upon but not reversed.