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Somewhat related to: Should the rep recalc award accepted answer and bounty points at the end of the day

While bounties themselves allow you to go over the daily rep limit, they will still affect your limit in that if you receive a 200 point bounty at the beginning of the day, you are barred from getting any more rep (other than accepted answers and more bounties) that day.

Therefore I would like to suggest that regardless of the time of the day in which a bounty was started, the end of that bounty should always be the end of the day (before server time rolls over to a new "rep cycle").

Edit: Case in point. I just got awarded (approximately 8:30pm EST, a half hour after server time rollover) a 250 point bounty and I am already over the rep limit. I don't think this is good at all for users and it almost seems like a disincentive to continue posting questions and answers.

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5 Answers 5

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This could easily be solved by making the reputation system consistent and intuitive, as has previously been suggested (many times). Put simply:

  • Upvotes and downvotes received go into bucket A;
  • Bounties received, bounties paid for, accepted answers (given and received) and downvotes given would go into bucket B.

Reputation gained for each day = MIN(200,A) + B

Do that and about a hundred feature requests disappear (including this one). I'm really befuddled at the obstinacy surrounding fixing (the appropriate verb for a bug) this.

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  • Agreed with this (basically the same thing I was saying to Skeet in my reply to him)
    – TheTXI
    Aug 19, 2009 at 22:45
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    I wish I could vote this up several times (aside from voting this answer up whenever I see it), even though I don't think I've ever reached the rep cap. This solution is easy to implement (I assume), easy to think about, and doesn't have any of these annoying order-of-operations issues. Does anyone know why this solution is being ignored? Is anyone opposed to it?
    – Anton Geraschenko
    Aug 19, 2009 at 23:38
  • Although this answer is more generalized, it is spot on. You have been pretty much right along with my views in terms of how reputation problems should be tackled, so check mark goes to you.
    – TheTXI
    Aug 23, 2009 at 22:13
  • Hear, hear! So, when does it happen...?
    – gbn
    Nov 11, 2009 at 21:51
  • As per the Stackoverflow podcasts, I think Jeff will want a cap for bucket B too ("never have unbounded behaviour"), so you might want to suggest a cap value for that too. I'm not sure if there is a cap for individual bounties?
    – Dan J
    Dec 8, 2009 at 18:18
  • @Dan: its already unbounded.
    – cletus
    Dec 8, 2009 at 23:29
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This would be great - although if it's performed retrospectively (which would make sense), expect Marc G to gain rather a lot of rep. He's a bounty whore ;)

Alternatively, award bounty at the exact time, but don't include it in the rep cap. That would have the same effect in terms of points, but could be a little less odd in some cases. In particular, if the bounty is awarded because the questioner explicitly accepts an answer (instead of it being auto-accepted) then the options are:

  • Award bounty immediately, it contributes to rep cap (current situation: a pain if it's accepted early in the day)
  • Award bounty at the end of the day, so it's irrelevant to the rep cap (fine the next day, but feels odd between the answer being accepted and the bounty being awarded)
  • Award bounty immediately, but don't let it affect the rep cap (best of both worlds, IMO)
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    if they just didn't count bounty points and accepted points towards a rep cap at all, we would never have to worry about these types of things. That would obviously be the best solution all around, but since it doesn't appear to end up happening, this is the next best option.
    – TheTXI
    Aug 19, 2009 at 20:42
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    Takes a bow....
    – Marc Gravell
    Aug 19, 2009 at 22:23
  • Very disturbing to see a man of God use that kind of vocabulary... ;)
    – Dean Kuga
    Jan 26, 2018 at 22:43
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I like this idea. This seems like a fair compromise to a frustrating problem.

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    It would also decrease the possibility of someone who wins a bounty just not bothering to participate for a day since they won't gain any rep.
    – TheTXI
    Aug 19, 2009 at 19:37
  • @TheTXI: Isn't that basically what the OP said?
    – mpen
    Aug 20, 2009 at 4:55
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This is completed because bounties and accepts are fully immune to rep cap now.

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/the-great-reputation-recalc-begins/

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I thought this was how it worked, seems like the logical behavior

If it doesn't, I agree with you

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  • There is one bounty that I am winning right now and it says "Ends in 7 hours" which would be approximately 2 hours or so into the next rep cycle and not at the end of a particular one.
    – TheTXI
    Aug 19, 2009 at 19:40
  • @TheTXI: Yes, but when is the /rep/ awarded?
    – GEOCHET
    Aug 19, 2009 at 19:41
  • And do you know for a fact that it counts towards the limit (assuming it hasn't been reached yet)?
    – juan
    Aug 19, 2009 at 19:41
  • Juan: I do remember last week getting a bounty for 100 rep and that made me hit rep cap much sooner than I should have.
    – TheTXI
    Aug 19, 2009 at 19:46
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    Marc seems pretty definitive on it: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9948/…
    – TheTXI
    Aug 19, 2009 at 19:48
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    @Juan - from experience ;-p
    – Marc Gravell
    Aug 19, 2009 at 22:24
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    I can confirm bounty counts towards the limit. I got a 275 point bounty at 01:30 UTC today, and have since had 17 upvotes and 2 accepted answers today. I got the rep for the accepted, but not a bean for the upvotes (sad face)
    – Rich Seller
    Sep 21, 2009 at 16:58

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