-4

Possible Duplicate:
Is losing privileges after placing bounty OK?
Do not lose privileges once gained

As all know Stack Overflow has several privileges that assigns to the users according to their reputation.

Imagine this: I have 2000 reputation, I can now vote to approve or reject suggested edits. Meanwhile I needed to start a bounty because I wasn't getting any answer and just lost 50 reputation. Now I can't vote on suggested edits again.

And my question is: Did my sense of evaluation changed? I just offered 50 reputation, that shouldn't change anything in the privileges.

As the FAQ says: "Reputation is a rough measure of: How much the community trusts you; Your communication skills; The quality and relevancy of your questions and answers" so once awarded a privilege to the user don't remove it because he lost reputation by awarding bounties, that doesn't affect any of these 3 parameters.

Improve this question
6
  • 6
    "Reputation is a rough measure of" - I think it's even worse than that. Above a certain point, it quite literally is a function of how much time is spent on the site, as well as how lucky you were to capture all the commonly asked questions during the early days.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 18:41
  • So what's the feature request? You think bounties should give reputation at not cost? You think bounties shouldn't exist at all?
    – Servy
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 19:04
  • @Servy - I believe the request is that once a privelege is gained, it cannot be lost due to reputation loss from a bounty.
    – LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 19:08
  • Yes, @LittleBobbyTables is right.
    – Sérgio Carneiro
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 19:12
  • 7
    When one could go all the way down to 1 without losing any privileges, then one could effectively transfer privileges to others by assigning bounties?
    – Arjan
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 19:13
  • (Please edit your question rather than only clarifying in comments, @Sergio.)
    – Arjan
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 19:14

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

If your reputation drops below one of the privilege thresholds by any means, then you lose the associated privilege. This is of course only temporary, since you'll almost certainly regain the reputation in short order.

You are certainly little different than you were five minutes before you offered the bounty, but the computer is a hard, unforgiving, soulless, calculating monster, and cares only whether your current reputation is above or below the threshold.

It would likely be more difficult to implement than is desirable, since you'd need at least one new database field, then you'd have to track whether a user lost rep by offering a bounty, or getting downvoted into the ground (which, presumably, should cause a loss of privilege).

All in all, kind of messy, and easier to just leave it as is.

Improve this answer

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