168

The last time we lifted the level cap was in 2015. In 2014, we added a unilateral close-as-duplicate power for gold tag badge holders, but no new reputation level. So we've been thinking about giving users more reasons to keep playing. (I've answered this question with some circumstantial evidence that people do begin losing enthusiasm after they hit 10k.)

Please answer with a description of the privilege you think would be worthy of 30k and include your arguments after a horizontal line (\n---\n). These should be on-site unlockables and not physical items. Proposals don't necessarily have to give users extra powers on the site, but they should feel significant to those who have achieved this impressive level of reputation.

I left an answer to be an example. I've had a significant head start over most everyone else thinking about this feature, so please don't worry that your idea is underbaked. That said, the most useful answers will include justifications more than "wouldn't it be cool if . . ."

Finally, let me be the first to point out how odd it is that I am proposing a new extrinsic motivation. It turns out that one of the great pleasures of this job is that I can do a small part in helping many other people enjoy writing great posts. I believe that a well-considered additional privilege level will benefit many users across the network. This is doubly true if that privilege empowers more people to solve problems and fix annoyances they come across.

28
  • 30
  • 96
    None. 30k users are no better at moderating than 20k users. In fact I've seen way to many who don't even know the basics of SE principals. New moderator privileges should be rewarded based on moderation experience rather than reputation as reputation does not correlate much with ability to moderate, especially at higher rep levels.
    – bjb568
    Apr 3, 2015 at 18:23
  • 44
    I agree with @bjb568 - look at flag history above 20k. If a user has thousands of accepted flags and less than 1% denied, then they are a candidate for significantly expanded moderation powers. Reputation is only good for telling us the user has contrbuted good content to the community - it isn't as helpful past a certain point at telling us whether that user should be given more access to sensitive moderation duties. It's clear, though, that more moderation must be performed by the community.
    – Pollyanna
    Apr 3, 2015 at 18:39
  • 4
  • 8
  • 7
    @bjb568: As I mention in the question, these need not be extra powers as long as they feel significant. Some of the more interesting ideas last time around are purely informational or cosmetic. Please feel free to suggest less disruptive suggestions than my comment moderation answer. Apr 3, 2015 at 18:47
  • 2
    @AdamDavis: I didn't even check for dupes. Sorry about that. We started talking about this internally last month and it slowly dawned on me that we aren't in the best position to come up with good ideas. I should have known that the idea to ask on meta wasn't even original. Apr 3, 2015 at 19:03
  • 2
    @JonEricson No need to apologize! It's old and at the time there was no need for it.
    – Pollyanna
    Apr 3, 2015 at 19:07
  • 2
    When will the decision be finalized? And, when will we get to see the feature?
    – user178465
    Apr 5, 2015 at 8:43
  • 7
    @Jon While this got many answers, I think if you want more this better become featured, this way it will also attract users from different sites around the network. (not just MSE dwellers :-)) Apr 6, 2015 at 7:57
  • 2
    A year later: anything happening with these ideas?
    – jscs
    Mar 30, 2016 at 22:49
  • 2
    @JoshCaswell: Not at the moment. :-( Unfortunately, Documentation and a few other features have soaked up a lot of developer time since the fall. Even shortly after posted this, I switched to asking about lightweight features. I'm looking forward to the summer when some of the projects will be getting wrapped up. Mar 30, 2016 at 23:13
  • 3
    @DavidArenburg: I'm going to be bringing this up internally, but it might be a while before we can update the status. It's not on the roadmap yet. Sep 14, 2017 at 15:29
  • 3
    @JonEricson now, another year later, has there been any more progress on this? Nov 15, 2018 at 3:07
  • 5
    It's useless to leave this open for over three years with no prospect of action being taken. It should just be historically locked at this point.
    – jscs
    Nov 26, 2018 at 18:53

47 Answers 47

1
2
10

Kevin B suggested that I add this here:

Exempt edits from "Title cannot contain ..." for 30k users.

The linked Meta.SO question has a fuller proposal and discussion.

9

Give 30k users the ability to see Not An Answer flags, perhaps in a review queue. They already have the ability to delete answers at 20k, now let's give them the ability to quickly and easily see which answers they can spend these votes on. Ultimately, it could be possible for 30k users to completely handle Not An Answer flags, which should help the mod queue somewhat.

4
  • What about spam flags? Jul 7, 2015 at 22:34
  • @PatrickHofman Spam flags are already handled automatically by the community. No moderator involvement.
    – durron597
    Jul 7, 2015 at 22:42
  • How are spam flags handled by community then? Jul 8, 2015 at 5:53
  • 4
    The vast majority of NAA-flagged answers is sent to the VLQ queue anyway, so this mostly already exists.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Jul 8, 2015 at 10:41
8

At 30K, extend the dupe hammer to tags in which I have a silver badge.


In the never-ending battle against dupes, we can enlist the help of more qualified people, defined as those who have acquired a silver badge in a tag along with a total of 30K rep.

For instance, I only have a silver badge in HTML, but I see no small number of posts that I would feel confident in unilaterally closing as dupes.

1
6

See (your) flag and review history for an arbitrary post.

Being able to see a more complete history of a post would allow trusted users to have a better idea of what the community sees at issue with the post and how to help direct either the poster or the community to a more productive outcome.

Being able to see if a post had:

  • Flag
    • Counts for
      • VLQ flags
      • NAA flags
  • Reviews
    • Links to the reviews (in progress and) completed on a given post
      • First post
      • Late answer
      • Close
      • Reopen
      • Low quality post
      • Triage and Help & Improvement (where enabled)

The 'see links to posts' is more of a "don't make this hard". I have occasionally had need to hunt up the reopen review on a post. So I go dig through my close votes to find where I voted on a question, and then I get a date, and then I tweak the URL of the reopen review queue history by 25s or 50s until I get into the range, and then I start searching for the post name. Very tedious. I am fortunate that this isn't SO or another site that generates scores of pages of reviews a day.

This would have some utility in finding out who is who is sniffing glue questions that sometimes show up on various meta sites.

The related bit here is that it would allow 30k users to better answer the questions about why certain things happened on meta and possibly reduce some of that load from mods who are currently the only ones with similar tools.

It would also allow 30k users a better insight into what the community feels needs to be done with a post and either fix it (given their more intimate familiarity with the workings of the site) or speed it on its way (poor quality negatively scored answer that has had NAA flags against it? - look at how the question can be made better so such answers aren't viable, or leave a comment about how to improve the answer, or make edits to improve the answer, or down vote and delete vote if that is the appropriate action).

1
  • You can already see all completed reviews through the timeline. Feb 9, 2019 at 17:36
6

Vote to lock/unlock posts

Users gain the privileges to close/reopen, protect/unprotect, and delete/undelete posts. It seems natural that the next privilege should be the ability to vote to lock/unlock posts. 30k users should have enough moderation experience to know when a question should be locked or unlocked, and if they use it wisely, it could help the site a lot.

1
  • 7
    I think we'd need to disallow locking/unlocking your own posts, though. I've seen high-rep users ask mods to lock their posts because they're getting comments they don't like. If the comments are not constructive they should be deleted instead; if the reason you don't like them is that they challenge your answer somehow, you shouldn't be able to shut that down. Nov 25, 2018 at 3:13
3

Instead of adding more privilege based on reputation, which at high number only reflects:

  • How well the user gets accustomed to the system and gains reputation by answering (while there are users who have high reputation by posting mostly questions, I don't think they are going to have too many reputation)
  • For most of the times, how many answers the user has posted, but tells nothing about the quality of the answers.
  • How long the user has been spending on the site (relatively), without any indicator of the user's activity in improving the quality of the site

I think the new privilege should be based on badges or badges + reputation or even a number beyond the requirement to get a certain badge. The point is to target people who care and want to upkeep the quality of the site and have proven their capability to do so more tools and power to speed up the processes. We can also take meta participation into account, though how to quantify it is not yet clear at the moment.

For example, high number of edits and reviews (could be set higher than the requirement for badge), plus gold tag badge gives the user binding close vote for any vote types on questions in the tag (with the same rules as current implementation). Same idea can be applied for silver tag badge, with reduced power/close vote types.

2
  • 6
    Good idea, but I don't see how this is an answer to the question being asked here.
    – Shog9
    Apr 5, 2015 at 16:45
  • 2
    @Shog9: Basically, "scrap this idea of adding privilege for 30k and go in a different direction". Though I admit this answer doesn't provide any idea for the other direction.
    – nhahtdh
    Apr 5, 2015 at 16:57
2

Create custom question filters for themselves for example

  • Only show me questions with a specific tag and some keyword.
  • Hide questions from people with less than N rep.
  • Hide questions from people who's home site1 is $OtherSESite e.g. SF or SO
  • Hide questions with a and a keyword.
  • Some combinations of the above and other $stuff.

By the time you get to 30k anywhere (with the possible exception of SO) you're probably finding it hard to wade through all the questions to find something interesting to answer. You probably have some ideas on how you can help yourself but you don't have any way of easily achieving that. For example I believe SF would be more relevant to me if I could hide all the questions from SO users who have less than 10k rep (it could be 100k or it could be 2k) it doesn't mater - it's a start. Similarly anything tagged containing the word port I really don't want to see.


For sites outside of SO 30k may be too high for this. SF has just 26 30k users far too many talented people fall by the wayside and for many of them wading through the crap to find an interesting question will be the cause.

1 A home site is the site you have most rep e.g. for me SF.

3
  • 3
    Some (most actually) of these features are planned to be added for all users. See questions with updates on the front page design and question list design.
    – Athari
    Apr 6, 2015 at 8:39
  • 4
    This is a good direction, and would definitely make 30k users feel special, but if they're going to work on better search, I think they should just do it for everybody.
    – jscs
    Apr 9, 2015 at 23:54
  • @JoshCaswell meta.stackexchange.com/questions/232242/…
    – user147520
    Apr 10, 2015 at 5:25
0

Ability to make community wiki questions

My suggestion is to allow users at this level to be able to mark their own questions as community wiki, if they have at least 3 community wiki answers. This would make sure they have at least some experience with community wiki, and would know when to make a question community wiki.

-1

More bounty freedom

I think its a good idea to give 30k users the ability to do more with bounties. Some ideas are below. I think the privilege should consist of a combination of these. These changes only go for the bounties the users own themselves, of course.


1. When a bounty ends or is being awarded, they can add an extra bounty of the same value immediately to another answer. The question doesn't show up another week in the featured tab. So it's just an option when awarding the bounty.

Advantages. If there are two good answers, the awarder doesn't have to choose between those two or give one of the answers another, larger bounty.


2. Being able to split the bounty between multiple answers.

Advantages. If there are two good answers, the awarder doesn't have to choose between those two or give one of the answers another, larger bounty.

Disadvantage. The answerers get a smaller bounty than expected.


3. Being able to edit the bounty message (only once per bounty) with changes less than 5 characters.

Advantages. This small edit can only be used to correct spelling mistakes, and cannot be abused.

Note: Maybe it should be possible that they can also edit other person's bounty messages, maybe with approval of the bounty owner.


4. Being able to have more than three bounties.

Advantages. High-rep users usually ask high-level questions, so they might need bounties to get the question answered or to reward good answers. These users can be trusted to not abuse it for rep transfer and such things.


5. Set a superbounty. This bounty can have the values +250, +500 and +750. A superbounty can only be set on a question which has had at least one other bounty. These bounties will always show up on top of the featured tab. They last two weeks instead of one. It will also be orange instead of blue, to give it even more attention. I think it should be limited to one active superbounty per user.

Advantages. On the largest sites even bounty questions may drown sometimes. For example, on stack overflow there are 400 bounty questions. This makes sure the question really got the largest amount of attention possible.


6. Raise the bounty award when giving it to some answer.

Advantages. Sometimes an answer of unexpected elegance is given and the answerer deserves a greater bounty than the question originally had.

1
  • 2
    I'm good with everything except #3. If we allow editing the bounty message, we may as well let everyone do it, and there should be a grace period rather than a character limit. Jan 19, 2019 at 0:57
-3

Allow them to migrate anything to anywhere, like the mods.

On this way, in the case of a new or small SE site, it would be easier to collect its initial user & content base, if they can earn the support of the 30k users of similar sites.

10
  • 6
    30k reputation is a good sign that you know what's off-topic for your site, but not that you know what's on-topic for other sites.
    – Mark
    Nov 26, 2018 at 1:21
  • 2
    @Mark The same problem exists also in the case of the mods. The logic is: expecting them to not going mad, just like it is expected also from the mods.
    – peterh
    Nov 26, 2018 at 4:40
  • @peterh Honestly, yes, it is also a problem for mods. That's why the moderator migration rates are honestly not all that great. That's not a reason to give the privilege to more people likely to make the same mistakes.
    – Servy
    Nov 26, 2018 at 22:44
  • @Servy I think not the mods migrating "too much" commit mistakes. The mistake is in the closed, inbreed communities rejecting imported content on cloudy, irrational reasons. This results that the mods don't migrate anything. The 30k users, not on the short leash of the mods, could work much more freely.
    – peterh
    Nov 26, 2018 at 22:49
  • 3
    @peterh Thanks for proving my point for me that this would just result in people migrating lots of content that doesn't actually belong on the target sites. The unrelated personal insults is just the cherry on top of that argument.
    – Servy
    Nov 26, 2018 at 22:51
  • @Servy No. It is content what belongs to these sites, only our wonderful good old boys don't let in, because they are... well... maybe they've lost some crucial sense of their objectivity in their long SE experience.
    – peterh
    Nov 26, 2018 at 22:57
  • 1
    @peterh You, who are not a member of those sites and who don't really know what does or doesn't belong there, think it belongs there. But the people who actually actively contribute to the site and are the primary answerers there, think it doesn't belong there. And you think forcing them to have the content that outsiders think belongs there but that the actual contributors there don't want is a good idea. History has shown, time and time again, that that ends badly. Entire sites have been literally removed as a result of this happening.
    – Servy
    Nov 26, 2018 at 23:14
  • @Servy The whole migration system is a crap. The intention would be to reuse the offtopic closed posts everywhere to build the initial content/user base of new SE sites. The massive wall before this obvious idea is very well visible on your attitude.
    – peterh
    Nov 26, 2018 at 23:42
  • 3
    @peterh And yet history has shown, time and time again, by doing what you propose and having the larger sites shoveling their crap onto newer smaller sites just kills those sites. Those smaller sites get flooded with bad questions that they don't have the user base to deal with, so everyone just leaves. This has happened plenty of times before. It has never resulted in actually helping those target sites by bringing in good content on a large scale.
    – Servy
    Nov 27, 2018 at 14:24
  • @Servy Offtopic closed questions, particularly if they are voted up, are not crap. If the target site itself can decide, what content they want there and what they won't, it would improve them. But honestly, why should I explain you that triviality? Why should I campaign by the SE to not kill their own sites and their own content? Why should I campaign against your senseless destructivity? It is the site of the SE, if they want stagnage, as they are stagnating since 2014, then it is their problem. Feel yourself well on the "stabilized" sites, ruled by "good old boys",
    – peterh
    Nov 28, 2018 at 18:16
-3

I think you could make a little shift of power from the elected moderators to the people who worked a lot for the rep.

I have two ideas:

  1. allow them to see flag counts (i.e., they would know, which post/comment how many times was flagged). No more.

XOR

  1. allow them to list the deleted posts, like the moderators.
3
  • 2
    10kers can see deleted posts. Sep 15, 2017 at 6:48
  • 2
    @JourneymanGeek Although 10k users can see deleted posts, they can list and search only in their own. Only you can do anything with deleted posts (incl. unlimited search / list of them).
    – peterh
    Sep 15, 2017 at 7:03
  • (Isn't XOR just or in English? (Not a rhetorical question.)) Jun 18, 2021 at 11:13
-4

An Avatar Border

This incredible mock-up of this complicated concept tool a whole 2 minutes for me to make

A simple colored border around the avatar to highlight the user's high level of respect on individual SE site. It could be given a unique color for each SE so that it doesn't just blend into the SE's background.

-5

Give them decisive undelete/reopen votes.

On this way, they could fix unfairly handled posts.

4
  • Sounds extremely dangerous. Jan 19, 2019 at 0:58
  • @pizzastaticvoidmain Why?
    – peterh
    Jan 19, 2019 at 2:59
  • That's still a dangerous privilege, even if it's only for 30k users. Jan 19, 2019 at 16:49
  • @pizzastaticvoidmain I think the danger of a mistakenly reopened/undeleted post is far smaller than the danger of the falsely closed/deleted posts. Imagine also the felling what it creates. A clearly bad post will be surely end up as closed.
    – peterh
    Jan 20, 2019 at 11:56
-6

Give them the ability to put a bounty to questions on the moment as they were asked.

Ordinary mortals can bounty a question just after 2 days. Here Shog explains, why is it so.

4
  • 4
    30K users ask very few questions. Most of them got to 30K by answering. Jun 26, 2018 at 20:04
  • 3
    @RobertLongson These don't need to be their own questions...
    – peterh
    Jun 26, 2018 at 20:06
  • 5
    If I come across questions organically they're almost certainly going to be old enough to bounty anyway. Jun 26, 2018 at 20:07
  • 1
    @RobertLongson Imagine the rush on a fresh, stellar question which is boosted also with a big bounty. Imagine the power in the hands capable to create such questions... and imagine, how wonderful is it, that it would not be a destructive power. These don't exist 2 days later. A 2 day old question is an oldie... around 20-30% of the upvotes arrives to the answers of such old posts.
    – peterh
    Jun 26, 2018 at 20:13
-6

3D Mode à la Stack Exchange Extreme!

Now with HTML5, we could have real 3D-mode built into the site. Many proposals focus on external presentation (blogs), moderation (which is really just tyranny of the elite), and other such features.

I would like a usable interface. Back in the 1990s, Excite saw the value in this and created Excite Extreme!. It was my favorite way to navigate the web. I'd like to be able to use this site in a similar fashion. Why does searching for [php] + [mysql] return to me an antiquated two-dimensional list when it can return a full fledged WebGL interface using high-tech VR?

Imagine when you search, if you could for instance hit Tab and find yourself perusing the results from a different dimension, or swimming through the answers. I would want to work towards that. That's the incentive I need to keep me active as a positive contributing member of this community.

The future is here! Let's break linear chains and start the revolution.

3
  • 5
    Why do you need 30k rep for that? Why not just open it up to everyone? :) Apr 24, 2018 at 18:37
  • /index.vrml
    – Jeremy
    Apr 24, 2018 at 18:50
  • 1
    @user134300: Wow, that's a blast from the past. I don't think I've even thought about VRML for a solid decade. Jun 24, 2018 at 5:57
-22

Social Network-ey features

Give 30k users a more customizable profile page. Let them customize the CSS (maybe just offer a few templates), add a background image, etc. Really Myspace it up.

Give 30k users the ability to post messages to their profile page. Either short twitter-style messages, or longer blog-style posts. Allow all users (30k or no) the ability to follow these feeds, offer both RSS and an SE mechanism that adds new posts to the follower's SE inbox.

Give 30k users the ability to directly message other 30k users. This would provide a private message feature that crops up here on Meta.SE from time to time as a .

Along with these, include filtering/ignoring functionality to grant these users control over who they communicate with and who follows them.

4
  • 2
    "Along with these, include filtering/ignoring functionality to grant these users control over who they communicate with and who follows them." This misses the point of SE. We're supposed to judge it on the content of the answer, not the user (unlike what our usercard may imply). Arguably, it's not very common that it happens, but that's the intent. Unless you are talking about PMs. Which a block user functionality would definitely be needed. Apr 6, 2015 at 19:12
  • @justcool393 I'm talking purely about the social network functionality here. Direct communication enables abuse and harassment, which means you need to grant users blocking/filtering tools.
    – Keen
    Apr 6, 2015 at 19:21
  • Ah, I see. Yes, that would be important for any social functionality. I think the only thing I object to is the custom CSS, but I find it interesting how many people seem to dislike social networking features. Apr 6, 2015 at 19:25
  • I really like the idea of custom css and posting messages on your profile. However, I completely object to allowing 30k users to be able to fully ignore a user. Nov 18, 2018 at 1:31
-54

FASTEST GUN SHIELD / TRIGGER VOTE RESET.

One of Stack Exchange's longest standing problems is the so-called "Fastest Gun" problem, where disproportionate weight is given to earlier answers at the expense of later, potentially more comprehensive answers.

The ultimate effect is that there's little or no point adding a new answer to an established question, even if you have a canonical answer that is arguably of vastly higher value.

I propose that 30K users can trigger a 'Vote Reset' on any question a) That they've answered and b) that is more than 3 months old, thus allowing a fresh ballot of answers.

(TO CLARIFY: The original posters would retain their rep from their original answers)

30
  • 21
    I'm sensing that people aren't liking this idea.
    – Richard
    Apr 4, 2015 at 14:49
  • 13
    This sounds like something that could subject to abuse. Then we need a feature to counter that abuse. While there is benefit in this when maintaining popular old question, I think the drawbacks outweighs the benefit here.
    – nhahtdh
    Apr 4, 2015 at 15:12
  • 11
    @nhahtdh Abuse? That outrageous feature will utterly drive the voting and answering system ad absurdum. That is far from the mild word of "abuse", I guess. Every single use of that feature seems basically abuse. ;-) Apr 4, 2015 at 15:39
  • 5
    @Richard: Looking at the ideas again, I think this is a poor solution for fastest gun problem. There are not going to be as many people looking at an old question, compared to when it is first posted. And when the votes are reset, people from the internet can't tell which answer is the "best" among all the answers.
    – nhahtdh
    Apr 4, 2015 at 16:37
  • 2
    @nhahtdh - Huh? The whole point of the upvote/downvote system is to allow people from the Internet to pass judgement on the rightness of answers
    – Richard
    Apr 4, 2015 at 17:03
  • 1
    In my experience, it is often worth taking a few minutes extra to improve your answer to get more votes. I don't see how a vote-reset would help here at all. I suggest you think this suggestion through once more, and/or give a better reason for why it would be a good feature. At the moment, I can't see anything positive with it. Apr 4, 2015 at 23:54
  • 2
    @SimonAndréForsberg - Because currently there's no incentive to write an awesome new answer on an old question. If you do, it basically sits at the bottom and gathers dust, even when it's vastly superior to the existing answers.
    – Richard
    Apr 5, 2015 at 0:04
  • 3
    @Richard Resetting the vote count on other answers would reduce the incentive to answer questions at all. Good luck in getting that "+100 score" answer badge now! Instead of having only one answer with low views and votes, now all of them have low votes. Instead, downvote and comment on the other answers and with your answer: Share, tweet and draw attention to it in a relevant chat-room in a nice way. Apr 5, 2015 at 0:10
  • 5
    Re-voting giving rep is a bad idea IMO as it can lead to reputation cheats. And if my answer is superior but it's vote count is reset to zero, it will take a loooong time before it reaches it's previous vote count again. I wouldn't expect people to go back to previous questions and re-vote on the answers. Sorry, I really don't like this idea. Apr 5, 2015 at 0:24
  • 11
    Vote reset would abuse voting system. Why don't you propose "Default Sort change to Newest First for limited period of time after an answer is posted on old question".. This would serve your purpose without abusing the system.
    – user178465
    Apr 5, 2015 at 9:23
  • 1
    Although this might not require user intervention unless you mutate the idea further. Or, simply request this feature as a new question.
    – user178465
    Apr 5, 2015 at 9:25
  • 3
    It would just take one pissed off 30k user to go and wipe out a person's reputation. Let me just go to SO's top voted answers and basically append a -10000 vote to an answer. Apr 6, 2015 at 5:02
  • 1
    @justcool393 - you misunderstand. They wouldn't lose their reputation when the vote gets reset. And your comment is a perfect example; why would you want to spend time creating an answer to a question that already has a massively upvoted answer, just so it can languish at the bottom?
    – Richard
    Apr 6, 2015 at 8:27
  • 1
    Okay, it might not wipe out reputation, but it'll wipe out the 10k score that the answer accumulated. It just takes someone that's having a bad day to do this. Even if it was logged, it'd be more work for moderators. This can also make it harder for people that don't have as much reputation if an answer is good enough (or would just need a few edits). Apr 6, 2015 at 19:09
  • 6
    @Richard You seem to assume that people who once voted on the answers of that question will just recover their votes on all the great old answers they once voted for instead of those votes just getting lost in oblivion. Not everyone is willing or attentive enough or even able to reconsider all his votes on a year old question just because it got a new answer from someone who thought "screw all those other answers, mine is better anyway" and expressed so by invalidating a hundred users' legitimate votes. Reputation or not is irrelevant to this problem. Apr 6, 2015 at 20:42
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