Why is there rep on Meta? [duplicate]

Question

What is the reason for having rep on Meta?

Why bother having up- or down-votes on meta? Isn't this a place to express your opinions? Why penalize people for expressing their opinions on this site?

Rep has nothing to do with expressing what peoples' ideas are, so why have it? For example, I, as a single-rep user can't comment, so this is penalizing me for my opinions.

The system also warns me that "you are about to be banned". So, because meta is about peoples' opinions and the community does not like that opinion, you should be banned?

This is a fault in the system IMO. Isn't a good site able to encourage opinions to make the site better? A good site is where there's the ability to discuss and have a back-and-forth discussion between users so as the site can become better. Obviously Jeff Atwood isn't working here anymore. If he did then maybe things could've gotten better.

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EDIT: So from the comments, rep shows what your stance is in the community. If you have none then you have no say. Is that the site you want, especially on meta?

And anyone who thinks that this is perfect is wrong. Anything can get better, no matter how good it is.

Answer 1

What is the reason for having rep on Meta?

The same reason as having rep anywhere else. It's a useful way to gauge a users standing on the site and a way to control privileges and community moderation.

From Help Center > What is reputation?

Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you; it is earned by convincing your peers that you know what you’re talking about. Basic use of the site, including asking questions, answering, and suggesting edits, does not require any reputation at all. But the more reputation you earn, the more privileges you gain.

Some related previous posts:

• Don't take rep for down votes on MSE

• If MSE rep is used for voting, why is it tied to privileges?

• The reputation system on Meta Stack Overflow is somewhat weird to understand

It's worth noting that per-site metas don't have their own rep and votes there don't affect a users reputation; exactly because the rep is directly linked to the rep on the main site. Meta Stack Exchange is unique simply because it is its own site.

• Rep Gain/Lose on Per-Site Metas

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Why bother having up or down votes on meta. Isn't this a place to express your opinions?

Votes are exactly how users here do express their opinion. That's their main role here; they are a quick and easy way to gauge the community's feeling on feature requests and discussions and help build a community consensus. Without voting Meta would be just be a forum where everyone would have to "answer" to express their opinion.

See Voting is different on meta

Answer 2

I suspect a good chunk of it is historic. MSE (well MSO) was pretty much set up along the same lines as the original trilogy (and was a bit of an afterthought and the concept of the per site, reputationless meta was almost exactly a year later. I'd note, both of these posts are written by Jeff Atwood, and presumably reflect what he had in mind.

I guess SE evolved what the meta concept was over that year.

However, MSE is in an odd place. There's no "parent" site to set privileges. It would be somewhat unpopular to say "hey guys, no reputation for you" - and if you switched to network wide reputation at any point, it might end up inconveniencing small site users and mods. Also being a subject matter expert in something, say programming, does not reflect your knowledge of the system and how. In a practical sense, MSE's an orphan meta site with no parents, and probably would not have existed if SE had grown differently. The quirks of having a site where opinions 'cost' a tangible amount of reputation is probably due to that.

In a sense, reputation here does reflect an odd mix of popularity of your ideas, and trust. It gives an idea of what the MSE community feels of you, and there's no real alternative that we can use that wouldn't inconvenience users in the short run.

In my case I hope its a reflection of how helpful or not I've been to other users, and/or the general feeling people have of my opinions. With individual posts, I've occasionally considered downvotes a badge of honour with answers like this at best and a sign I need to improve.

And well, reputation is essentially imaginary internet points. I suppose the real question is "How do we fairly determine an arbitrary score of how well someone gets SE"

If we used a total of reputation on all sites, it would give larger more active sites more weightage. If we went for none at all, well, there's no barrier of entry (and there's some positive aspects to this). In a practical sense, its a system that has generally worked, at least as badly as the rest of the network.

Answer 3

You have saying even with 1 rep. You have no say only if you are on a post ban. On the Meta SE, as I've heard, this post ban happens only in really exceptional cases. Its reason is the freedom of expression.

Meta SE was once the meta.stackoverflow.com. Until some years ago, the meta SO was both the meta of the stackoverflow and of the whole SE network. Later they were divided.

On the site metas, votes still exist, but they don't affect the reputation. Its obvious reason is that not your meta popularity matters, instead your contributions to the main site. The SE doesn't want complaints and flamewars, they want a lot of visitors producing good content (to attract more visitors).

The meta SE, this site, is different. It doesn't belong to a main site, it is essentially the meta of the whole SE network. It doesn't have mod elections, rather the CMs are its mods. It is essentially a "chief justice department", thus if you want to contribute here, you have some high reason for that. Thus, here, despite that it is a meta, we have rep what we can lose with an unpopular post.

The downvoter circles are not so hard here as on the site metas, because also they know, doing really bad things are much more visible for the SE (note, the CMs can see induvidual votes if they really want). Many of these collective downvoters also think, that producing an antidemocratic, single-tone atmosphere is actually a positive thing. "Help to find the best answer for all questions", around so looks their world view. Although their downs are here more painful, because we have here real rep.

But don't forget: a single upvote balances 5 downs, and a single accept balances 7.5. It seems, the SE refuses only the contributions of the very unpopular posters. If you are over this limit which is not hard even in my case, you are around okay, and they can't do anything.