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I currently have 251 reputation, thus I do not have the Established User privilege.

But I do have access to the timeline of a post, which already gives me access to one of the two perks of being an established user.

They may view the vote counts on posts

And I even get mroe details, since I would know exactly, when was the question and each of its asnwer downvoted and upvoted.

For example, this is the timeline of this question.

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The "view vote count" privileges is less about restricting access to the specific vote counts and more about limiting load on the servers.

From Jeff's answer on Show Total Votes (or Up/Down Votes)

The total vote count (score) is denormalized, but the individual up/down vote counts are not.

So to display it on every post would incur 2 vote table queries * number of visible questions / answers. Our DB is fast, but the vote table is pretty massive, and not doing a query is always faster than doing it.

So ultimately, the only reason it is a privilege is because it is expensive to do. The timeline page can be cached so it is less expensive and does not need to be a privilege, which is why you can access it without achieving a specific rep level.

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  • Additionally I don't think a lot of people know of that page? It's the first time I've seen it. Or have I missed an obvious link all these years?
    – Stijn
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 8:41
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    @Stijn it's not linked at all, although I recall seeing a user script floating around here once before to add it client side.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 8:42
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    @Stijn here's the post I was thinking of. Shog links a script to add it in his answer.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 8:43
  • The up/down counts are denormalised now.
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 8:44
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    @JanDvorak really? I missed that, which sort of blows the argument out of the water. I can't find a reference to that change
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 8:45
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    The timeline page is also not linked from anywhere. It's effectively a power-user route. Nothing on it is secret per se, and this part of the "Established User" privilege is more about convenience and ease of access to the voting breakdown than anything else.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 23:10

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