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I've been on the network a while and have earned the "trusted user" privilege on multiple sites. I have a pretty good idea of how things like voting and answer acceptance work.

On sites where I don't have a lot of rep, though, I get new-user reminders: "don't forget that you can accept this answer", "please consider leaving a comment" (on a downvote), and I think I've seen another but I can't remember what it is. Is this really necessary?

The use of the reminders already depends on the reputation of the current user (not everybody gets these). I can't tell what that reputation threshold is; I don't see anything about this in the privilege descriptions. I just got one of these reminders on a site where I have 445 rep, so it's at least that high. We wouldn't want it to be as low as the remove new-user restrictions privilege, but does it need to be as high as it is? And what is the threshold -- is it bundled into established user and I'm going to be seeing these for another 550 rep?

Could this threshold be lowered? Maybe the grant of an association bonus should remove these reminders?

These reminders are canned SE-wide messages ("remember to accept an answer" etc); they do not in any way involve per-site conventions or site-specific expertise. This is also not a request to change other privileges.

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    Related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73525/… (good idea IMO :)) – Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating Jan 11 '15 at 21:06
  • @ShadowWizard - I'd say the question you've linked is a possible solution to this problem. Not sure which way round to close as a duplicate. – ChrisF♦ Jan 11 '15 at 21:13
  • @Chris not sure about that, the other one is explicit feature request with a clear goal, this one here is to discuss other options. Personally I'd leave both open at least for now. – Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating Jan 11 '15 at 21:15
  • @ChrisF maybe this one should cover the "why?" and "what's the threshold" part (which is already answered here) and the other can carry forward as the feature request (leaving both open). I mentioned using the association bonus in this question already, so I'll go ahead and propose that in an answer over there. (I didn't find that question before asking this one or I would have just answered there.) – Monica Cellio Jan 11 '15 at 21:15
  • @ShadowWizard - I agree about leaving both open for now. I certainly didn't want to act unilaterally (which would have happened either way I voted); – ChrisF♦ Jan 11 '15 at 21:24
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    Quite humorously, this also happens on sites where I'm a mod (but still have <2000 rep). Because obviously a moderator needs to be reminded how to comment, just in case they haven't figured that out yet. – Doorknob Jan 11 '15 at 22:24
  • @Doorknob yes, me too! But I decided to leave that out of the question lest it be deemed "too localized". – Monica Cellio Jan 11 '15 at 22:25
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Since you asked

I can't tell what that reputation threshold is

I'll clarify that the popup-looking message

enter image description here

appears on every downvote until 2000 rep, as documented here. Note that this level was set in 2009, when the network was quite different from what we see today. I think it is high time to reconsider this behaviour (or perhaps drop the popup entirely... but this is a side remark).

It may be technically complicated to look up the reputation on other sites (different databases). But the granting of an association bonus is something that each site is already aware of: when you open a protected question, it checks if you have this bonus and uses this information to determine if your reputation is enough to answer. So, it should not be difficult to disable generic SE reminders on the basis of the user having the bonus.

Solution for "right now": one can disable reminders such as the one above with a simple user CSS rule:

.votecell .message {
  display: none !important;
}

Note that this removes other messages like "you can't vote on locked posts", which isn't a big deal: being an experienced user, you should know what's happening when you see the post score "bouncing back" after your attempt to vote.

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    Holy cow -- 2k? I'll probably never reach that on some of my sites... – Monica Cellio Jan 11 '15 at 20:36
8

Does it really matter?

My feeling is kind of split. On the one hand, i do know this stuff. On the other hand, it can sometimes be useful to see the site from the POV of a newbie. Also, there's always an off-chance that you would have forgotten something. (Not you particularly, some other random person. ;P)

It's also not really intrusive. A popup when you upvote an answer on your question. OK, click close. There are enough other popups to worry about even after 1k (comment too short, review problems, connection problems, bad title...).

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    Ah. I don't tend to get those other pop-ups, and I participate infrequently on a lot of sites so it'll be years before these go away. They aren't frequent, of course, but they're distracting and it led me to wonder if the threshold needs to be as high as it is. But I see your point about seeing a site through low-rep eyes. – Monica Cellio Jan 11 '15 at 19:56

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