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Why does reputation have a lower bound of 1?
Why does a person start on 1 reputation? Why not 0? It can confuse the calculation of reputation points.
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1How can it confuse the calculation?– slugsterOct 14, 2011 at 3:05
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8You get 1 point for breathing.– LarsTechOct 14, 2011 at 3:07
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12"There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."– johnsywebOct 14, 2011 at 3:10
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4Meh, let's scrap the whole thing and switch to a scoring system based on dice rolls. Upvotes are 2d6 +modifers, stave off downvotes with saving throws, etc.– Anthony PegramOct 14, 2011 at 3:38
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And also, why can't you have a reputation lower than 1?– iphonemaniacOct 14, 2011 at 3:48
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1 Answer
No, it can't start at 0.
See the problem is we're not very good programmers, and the divide by 0 errors were absolutely killing us, so 1 is the minimum.
answered Oct 14, 2011 at 4:22
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3@iphonemaniac - When reputation reaches 0 we get errors again, so we stop before it gets there...that's why it never gets to negative either. Oct 14, 2011 at 4:25
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9You'll be singing a different tune when Jon Skeet overflows the rep column in the database Oct 14, 2011 at 4:56
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3Heh, and I always thought it was a psychological thing, as in "We give you one point for free, so that you don't have to feel like you're a zero."– user102937Oct 14, 2011 at 19:54