13

I think that each user should have the same user on each of the SO related sites. I'm very active in SO and have some activity in ServerFault and I don't need separate statistics for every site - just a single "meta user".

Improve this question

9 Answers 9

Reset to default
17

SO / SF reputation scores are measuring different things, because they have different topic focus (programming vs. sysadmin). Super User reputation is also measuring something different.

And so is participation here, technically.

We can see the desire to sync the contents of your profile (website, email, about me, etc), but not the reputation score.

Improve this answer
8
  • 1
    one thing that probably should not happen, is when migrating content stuff should not by community wikid if there is a user match ...
    – waffles
    Jun 29, 2009 at 1:39
  • Jeff I think that some of the privileges would be nice though...even if not the rep. Not being able to edit questions and answers after you've been used to that for so long on the other sites is a PITA... excuse my French.
    – BenAlabaster
    Jul 2, 2009 at 22:29
  • This answer doesn't really apply to meta, IMHO. The "meta.foo" community should (ideally) be the same as the "foo" community, and so the reputation between the two should be shared.
    – Laurence Gonsalves
    Dec 6, 2010 at 19:54
  • @Laurence indeed that is how it works on all meta sites except this one, see blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/new-per-site-metas
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 7, 2010 at 8:15
  • That's great for the other sites, but when is meta.stackoverflow going to be fixed? The current state is pretty broken. By treating meta.stackoverflow as the "national capital" you've essentially left stackoverflow.com with no real meta of its own.
    – Laurence Gonsalves
    Dec 7, 2010 at 20:35
  • @laurence how so? stack overflow dominates because it's 100x to 1000x as large as the other sites in the network, anyhow.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Dec 7, 2010 at 22:57
  • Without sharing rep, meta.stackoverflow isn't really stackoverflow's meta. It's a completely separate community.
    – Laurence Gonsalves
    Dec 8, 2010 at 1:05
  • I disagree with strictly joining your about me between multiple communities. Being that these are other communities however, a reputation score should be made SEPARATE and so should your profile describing yourself within that community. To make it more convenient you should have the option of migrating key details of your profile with ease.
    – Chamilyan
    Apr 1, 2011 at 6:40
6

I would really like to have a single place where I can point to, that has the rep points for all of my accounts.

I have attempted adding the flair from ServerFault to my StackOverflow bio page.

Having it on this site would make slightly more sense than on the other sites.

Improve this answer
4

I agree.

Your ID should be global, but your reputation, badges and even bio should be unique to each site. The default would be to have the same bio as the first entered, but you should be allowed to override it for each site.

Improve this answer
4
  • That's what I was thinking. If you have multiple accounts I see no problem with the profiles showing rep, badges, and links to questions on all the sites as long as there is some indication as to which is which and the ability to filter out one or more.
    – HerbN
    Feb 1, 2010 at 15:46
  • @HerbN - this is effectively what we have with the account associations. The bio is (optionally) copied when you associate accounts, but can be overridden there after.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Feb 1, 2010 at 16:19
  • I have all mine associated and the bios copied but is there one place to see all my reps at once? I'll admit I might have just missed it.
    – HerbN
    Feb 3, 2010 at 17:26
  • @HerbN - there isn't a single page that shows the full details, but the "accounts" tab on your user profile shows the flair from the other 3 sites - which is rep + badge totals.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Feb 3, 2010 at 17:31
3

Personally, I think the reputation for each site should remain separate. However, let it be pointed out that having high rep on Stackoverflow doesn't mean you know a lot about programming in general anyway. You could just be an iPhone programming god, and know nothing about Java, C, .Net, SQL, or many other popular programming topics. They may not have actually answered any programming questions at all, but just got a lot of rep answering fluffy, subjective questions that don't have much merit. You can't really draw any opinions at all about somebody based solely on their reputation. To draw a real opinion, you actually have to look of the answers they have given. All reputation means is that you have spent enough time on the site, and put in information that has been found to be somewhat useful to someone. Remember, you get +10 for an upvote, and -2 for a downvote. So you have to try really hard, or be a real jerk, to actually have a declining score.

Improve this answer
1
  • One point on the high rep not equaling being an expert in a given area isn't that partially solved by the tag specific flair?
    – HerbN
    Feb 1, 2010 at 15:45
2

I don't mind the differing profiles, so long as I can log into each without having to re-register.

You might thing about putting crosslinks to the other sites on the sidebar... I know it would encourage me to jump over.

Improve this answer
1
  • 2
    cross links at bottom of page already
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jun 28, 2009 at 9:45
2

I agree with @Brad Gilbert re: a "single place" for rep info - ideally I'd like to see my ServerFault, StackOverflow, Meta and eventually SuperUser "recent activity", badges and rep on 1 screen.

I think that's another site though. Ideally it would take the form of an over-arching "network." Then the individual topic sites would be children to the larger network and cross site activity can be monitored from the parent organization's site.

That would allow new specialized sites owned by Jeff and Joel to be added fairly easily as they come online. I know Jeff was thinking this is only a trilogy, but even Star Wars got prequels.

Improve this answer
2
  • Well like I pointed out, having it on this site, made slightly more sense. I actually really like your idea for an all-encompassing network site. I can already imagine some of the features it would have, it could be awesome. ( I don't usually use the word awesome, but in this case I think it is apt )
    – Brad Gilbert
    Jun 29, 2009 at 3:03
  • 'Awesome' is entirely warranted when describing the potential here
    – Rob Allen
    Jun 29, 2009 at 12:01
2

Nope. If the accounts were shared, I think it would be a bit misleading.

I'm not very good at sys-admin stuff, so my ServerFault reputation should be lower than my programming/StackOverflow rep - and it is! (I seem to be better at "meta" than programming too, I'm currently the second-top user here, for.. some reason oO)

Improve this answer
0

I'm not sure if this is supposed to go in an "answer" or a comment to Jeff's post, but here it goes:

While I see what you are saying and I really don't expect to be given reputation at serverfault for my answers on stackoverflow, as the site deals with a technical aspect I know little about, why shouldn't we get our reputation transferred to this site and to superuser? I don't know, it just seems to me like a logical thing, at the very least for this site.

Improve this answer
0

One thing I would like to see shared is my list of favourites.

Flagging questions because I expect to need that answer in the fairly near future. But with multiple sites I'm likely to end back with attempts to remember the right keywords for search to find it.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .