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Hello everybody!

Is it possible to give away reputation points to another account?

Well, my question gears towards the following idea:

Reputation points are a precious ressource. Think of a company that has to solve IT problems on a regular basis and wants to leverage SO. So the more bounty points attached for example the more our fellow SO-guys will put their shoulder to the wheel (first time I use that proverb, hopefully correct, looked it up on dict.cc).

So to gain more rep points the employees should take time earning some. Of course there has to be some monitoring and competition to raise their motivation. Monitoring with a single account seems to be complicated. But maybe it isn't, open for suggstions.

So the easiest way would be to have several accounts that share points as required.

What do you think?

Best regards

Raffael

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    Is this not a fib of some description? Points are the community's way of recognizing the usefulness of answers supplied. Transferring points would give someone a false reputation. Points are not currency, i reckon.
    – Remou
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 13:29
  • wow ... downrated on the spot ... easy, pals ... even if you don't think it's necessary ... to make the rep points something currency-like would have intersting efects ... that's for sure. But the hint cross-bounting is good and would provide a good solution
    – Raffael
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 13:55
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    Downvotes on Meta are to be expected. They only express that the downvoter does not like the proposal, unlike in other sites, where downvoting expresses denial of expertise. But this even more shows that reputation is no currency.
    – malach
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 14:20
  • @Ralph While we are different here on Meta, I think that considering downvotes as a "denial of expertise" on the main Q&A is a bit overharsh. They simply indicate something which the voter does not find useful or clear - this could be because the answer was not structured in a way that could be understood, such as making too many assumptions on the reader's knowledge. Remember - votes are done on posts, not people, no matter where on the network you are. One should not take downvotes to be a statement on one's own abilities.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 14:53

3 Answers 3

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I don't agree this is needed in any way, since you can already offer a bounty on another user's question.

Transferring rep points would introduce so many tracking issues and abuses of the system, for a problem that's already solvable, even with separate account.

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What reason would you need reputation transferred between accounts for this scenario?

The only effect reputation has, in quantity attached to a single account, is to allow advanced maintenance privileges. If this is for a third-party company to leverage Stack Overflow as something of an "employee rating system" or "employee motivation system", then higher privileges are technically detrimental to that intent because they open up responsibilities for the employee that are not related to doing his or her employed job. When it comes to just earning reputation, posting questions and posting answers, you don't need any reputation to accomplish this.

If you need it for bounties, any user can post a bounty on any one else's questions. So if one person needs a bounty but cannot afford it, simply request one of the higher reputation users to supply the bounty instead. This is going to pretty much have the same impact as transferring reputation - both accounts would just be losing it anyway.

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Instead of having two accounts and transferring rep from account A to account B, the user of account B should just do the action that account A required.

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  • the reason why this is not a solution is given in my post.
    – Raffael
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 13:18
  • @Raffael, I don't see the reason, could you clarify it for me?
    – jzd
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 13:19
  • When an employee is just performing within a standard account then his accomplishments (reputation point income) can't be identified properly, b/c the points are deployed time delayed. Transferring of points would be an extremely intersting feature IMO.
    – Raffael
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 13:24

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