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I really like to see the profile of the users who answer my questions if they have a lot of rep, because I might learn from a question that they asked or answered.

I see a lot of users who received rep on off-topic questions kept for historical reasons. like this

This question (and many others) has given a lot of rep to the asker and those who answer.

It might be unfair to remove rep from those guys, but questions before were easy to answer. Nowadays, it's harder for new users to get rep. So is there any way to make it a fair game for new users without making the old users angry?

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    The question you linked is a community wiki one, so users there don't earn rep from the votes anymore. It became that way one day after it was posted, so not many users earned much from it - just saying
    – Simon Sheehan
    Mar 5, 2012 at 23:34
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    Your point is still good though.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Mar 5, 2012 at 23:34
  • there are other questions sir
    – Lynob
    Mar 5, 2012 at 23:35
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    Because a few people who got rep for off-topic questions don't want to let a single point go and went on a major tantrum on Meta Stack Exchange in the past few days.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Mar 5, 2012 at 23:36
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    I'd be perfectly willing to support keeping the questions (in an altered display state), but removing this reputation. Sure, you'd get some people bitching, but you'd solve all the good arguments about keeping the useful content around for the good of the Internet. People will get over reputation, as long as the content is still visible.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Mar 5, 2012 at 23:55
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    As an addendum to Cody's comment, for every person I saw whining about their lost rep, there were four who just wanted to keep the deleted content.
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 6, 2012 at 0:00
  • Yes, I think the rep loss was just a temporary shock as a result of the massive change in the reputation system. Everyone predicted that would cause an uproar. The thing about that uproar is it will die down, and already has. It's unfortunate that the reputation system changes got intertwined with the deletion of old content. There is some intersection, but one was already starting to go on before the rep system changes. I don't think most people mean to connect them. Those that are most passionate about keeping useful content around don't care much about rep, they have plenty of it.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Mar 6, 2012 at 0:15

2 Answers 2

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I think this boils down to the distinction being made between locked questions, and deleted ones. Questions that are locked, like strangest language feature have valuable content, and used to be on topic here at Stack Overflow. They are kept because of the value of their content, but locked so that they don't interfere with the site or create broken windows.

The deleted questions (theoretically) have zero valuable content, and were never on-topic. Favorite programmer food would be a good example—my favorite answer therein being I like cake!.

The view is that rep earned for legitimate answers that are no longer on-top shouldn't be taken away; rep for junk answers that were never on topic is ill-begotten, and the original authors should have no reasonable expectation about keeping it.

It sucks that people will lose rep, and it might seem unfair, but this rep really should never have existed in the first place.

EDIT

Per the Shog's blog post, it looks like rep on deleted answers will not be removed, so long as the post had a score of +3 or more, and was visible for at least 60 days.

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    I like cake!
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Mar 6, 2012 at 0:26
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    Rep on deleted questions is being restored, started a couple of hours ago on meta. I suppose you can have your cake and eat it too.
    – Uphill Luge
    Mar 6, 2012 at 1:08
  • @UphillLuge - cool. And nice pun!
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 6, 2012 at 1:21
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NO, the new users just have to adapt and be better. Whatever you do, don't make the old users angry.

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  • +1 for Whatever you do, don't make the old users angry (not because that's fair but because of fun)
    – gnat
    Mar 6, 2012 at 5:09
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    Ah, much better than your last answer. :P
    – user102937
    Mar 6, 2012 at 5:19
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    @Robert, Yeh, I really hit the bold button harder this time.
    – Lance Roberts
    Mar 6, 2012 at 5:20
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    Lance - aren't you an old user? Is this meant to caution people against pissing you off??? :-)
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 6, 2012 at 6:08
  • @Adam, I didn't really intend it in a personal way. Just a joke referencing his question.
    – Lance Roberts
    Mar 6, 2012 at 6:11

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