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I think everybody have met with the fact, that usually closed questions, specifically not constructive questions get the most upvote.

It wouldn't be wise to forbid voting on these questions, of course. But what about not giving any reputation for votes if they go for a closed question? The whole system would probably be not too easy. But I realized that some users go for reputation with questions of this type.

When I see an answer from someone having a huge amount of reputation I think he/she has the knowledge and is wise enough to take his/her answer into consideration. But having one popular not constructive question - this doesn't mean to me what reputation means otherwise.

I read some posts about automatic downvotes and I hate them for many reasons. I think that leaving reputation unchanged would be OK for this type of questions.

What do you think?

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  • Can you post an example of the questions you are referring to? – Taryn♦ May 31 '13 at 10:50
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    Not constructive questions will end up being deleted, or should end up that way. Once deleted, any reputation gains for the post will be lost (up to 60 days before). Is that not enough? – Oded May 31 '13 at 10:51
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    @bluefeet this question and the comment below gave the idea to post my question here. – qben May 31 '13 at 10:57
  • @Oded this is new to me that these questions get deleted. But there are still many problems with them. You say reputation gains will be lost up to 60 days before. That's not the whole amount as I suggest it should be. And what about badges earned and so on. – qben May 31 '13 at 11:00
  • @qben - Considering that many such questions do get deleted within 2 months of being asked, that does include the whole amount. Badges that have been earned in good faith are kept - we do not take badges away, as a rule. – Oded May 31 '13 at 11:03
  • @Oded see the question I linked in my previous comment. An example of 'escaping' from deletion and from loosing reputation that should have never be gained. I think this is not the only one. – qben May 31 '13 at 11:06
  • One important thing also, that I'm not sure deletion is the proper way. Those upvotes shouldn't have gone there in waist. The question is useful in a way and would be a pity to be deleted. – qben May 31 '13 at 11:08
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    Right. History lesson... When that question was asked, way back in 2009, we didn't have as strict a set of rules as we do now. It was a valid question then. It isn't now and we don't believe that penalizing a user for what was OK at the time is the right thing to do, even if it isn't OK now. – Oded May 31 '13 at 11:09
  • I don't want to penalize users. This rule could come in practise by its introduction. No one would lose any reputation for old questions and answers. – qben May 31 '13 at 11:17
  • @Oded what about my suggestion that these questions shouldn't be deleted? – qben May 31 '13 at 11:18
  • @qben - They have not been... And will not be if they are very popular. – Oded May 31 '13 at 11:23
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    @Oded I contest there are many such question that get deleted within two months of being asked. On other SE sites, yes, they do, on SO, there are still plenty of list questions, off topic questions, etc, that are upvoted which will have no impact on rep when deleted. The retention of reputation from these is not a good idea, IMO, as we want to say that the reputation score means something. Now, it means that you have good content, or that you have crappy content that you were good at letting live for 60 days. I'd rather the rep score just be a reflection of having good content. – casperOne May 31 '13 at 11:58
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    @casperOne as far as I recall, letting live for 60 days rule has been introduced as a mean to make crap deletion possible at all; attempt to do it the other way (the "right", "fair", straightforward way) was cancelled because of causing too much conflict and too much damage to community morale ("black weekend" anyone?). See: Community-led deletionism: a protocol for sanity... – gnat May 31 '13 at 12:22
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    @qben I'm not certain I understand what you're aiming for - are you suggesting that votes on a closed question (or its answers) have no reputation effect when said votes are cast after it is closed? – thegrinner May 31 '13 at 14:22
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    @thegrinner yes I mean that. And the 60 days rule could go with this too. Then there would be no need to delete a useful but not constructive question. – qben May 31 '13 at 15:01
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In my opinion there are two things at work here:

  1. You don't like that old not-constructive questions with answers has tons of upvotes
  2. You don't want people who answer these questions to get rep.

I think there is an issue with both of these.

First, this type of question when posted in 2009 was allowed but it does not meet today's standards so it was closed in 2012. That doesn't mean that the content is not helpful to people searching for answers, as a result it is closed to new answers but not yet deleted.

For this particular question and other not-constructive older posts the upvotes still count because the topic was allowed then. I don't think we should punish people who answered these older questions because they are not-constructive by today's standards, they will be punished enough if the question gets deleted and they stop getting rep from it.

In my experience, if someone posts a new not-constructive question to the site, they typically do not get upvotes and are usually bombarded with downvotes. The question gets closed and eventually deleted making the reputation concern non-existent.

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  • it is also worth mentioning that 200 points daily-reputation-limit takes care of most abusive consequences of gaining rep through "pupulist" upvotes. No matter how one bends, only 20 upvotes a day would serve rep gain – gnat May 31 '13 at 11:56
  • It's not about punishment, it's about refining the definition of reputation to give it a greater quality. Right now, we've lowered the value of reputation by saying anything older than 60 days you maintain your rep for. – casperOne May 31 '13 at 12:00
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    @casperOne punishment is probably not the correct word for it. It seems to me like the concern with this post is about older not-constructive questions, recent ones are in my experience get handled pretty quickly and typically are downvoted to oblivion anyway. – Taryn♦ May 31 '13 at 13:24
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    Deletion is not a good solution in my opinion. Letting a not constructive question to live and gain reputation because it was found constructive one day - this is also not a solution. – qben May 31 '13 at 15:04
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I think it would be the best if a not constructive question (and the answers) would get no more reputation because of votes after closing them. Also they should lose the last 60 days' reputation change.

This is a good solution in my opinion, because:

  1. Reputations gained in the past will not change in the future.
  2. There is no need to delete a not constructive but useful question just to prevent more reputation changes.
  3. Users will not get reputation because of not constructive questions in the future.

All the three above are very important.

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