"Invite new user" button

Question

My idea :

Every user will have his "Referral link" (for example: https://stackoverflow.com/referral/1952862) and can publish it in different places, share it with friends, etc. For each registration of a new user using his referral link he will receive e.g 10 reputation points. My idea will encourage users to promote our network and we'll earn new users.

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Badge requests :

Inviter

• Type: Bronze

• Description: Invited 1 user with a reputation higher than 50

??? (I haven't got an idea for a name)

• Type: Silver

• Description: Invited 25 users with a reputation higher than 50

??? (I haven't got an idea for a name)

• Type: Gold

• Description: Invited 100 users with a reputation higher than 75

@EDIT

If you're giving me downvotes please tell me why!

@EDIT 2

For everybody who downvoted my question :

Do you not understand? If we will get new users, our network will earn more on advertisements and will be more popular!

Answer 1

NO

Stack Overflow is not a social network. Users gaining rep for... knowing people is not right - rep is a measure of how much the community trusts you, and how much knowledge you have contributed to the site.

Also, I don't see the point in this. We already have a LOT of users, and a LOT of new users coming in daily. Also, SO is pretty much the most well-known programming Q&A site there is. We usually rank in first or second when you Google a programming problem. We're not about to have a new-user-deficiency or anything.

Answer 2

SE is not a social network. It's not about who you know it's abut what you know.

There are enough ways to game the reputation system already without adding more ways to earn reputation without actually demonstrating knowledge or ability to write good questions and answers.

Site promotion is good, but the "unit" of measure for this should be related to questions and answers. Signing somebody up is not an end in itself. On the other hand posting a link to a useful question or answer you have created will already net you a reputation bonus. This mechanism makes it advantageous for you to both author quality posts and promote their exposure to new users.

Promoting users over content would tend to cause the content to suffer. If the goal was signing up new users and getting them above a certain rep level, you would be motivated to upvote their content even if it was bad content even if it was junk. The reputation system needs to be independent of as many factors as possible so that it is a proper incentive to write good questions and answers, not find ways around doing that.

Answer 3

You propose two things: a reputation award for the person doing the referring, and a family of badges for referrals. Most of your question is about the latter, but I suspect the former is why you have all those downvotes.

Reputation is earned for what you do on the site. (The association bonus is the only exception, and its rationale is different.) Vicarious bonuses because you got somebody else to do something (in this case, join and earn rep) are out of line. When a user joins and participates, that user earns rep and those contributions benefit the site. The fact that you're the person who whispered "hey, check out SO" in someone's ear really doesn't matter to the site.

Badges, on the other hand, are harmless. We have a similar set of badges already (Announcer etc), so the principle is sound, but it's not clear what the additional benefit of your proposed badges would be. I'm not opposed to badges, but I don't think a strong case has been made either, so it doesn't seem worth the developer time now. That could change if there's a good argument and the effort is low.