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Starters on Stack Overflow tend to lose interest as soon as their first question starts getting downvotes. Their first question also sometimes gets closed because it was either not framed properly or it missed some very common things.
There should be way to cope with this for instance give some starter bonuses to new users.
Why?
The reputation is floored at 1 so it can't go below that. Seeing your starting bonus being eroded could be more discouraging.
You can obviate downvoting by reasearching the site's guidelines prior to asking your first question. That's hardly hidden from view when users ask their first question, write their first answer, &c.
I'm not sure this is a good idea. The whole point of reputation is to measure how much the community trusts a certain user. New users that haven't done anything yet aren't trusted because they haven't done anything to prove that they should be trusted.
If all new users get bonus reputation without proving that they should be trusted, this could lead to abuse. For example, if the bonus would be 15 reputation, that would let any new user bypass the new user restrictions, making these restrictions ineffective. For example, spammers and trolls would get this bonus reputation and be able to immediately post 10 spam links in the same post and inappropriate images such as ads or Hitler porn. Newly created sock puppets would immediately be able to upvote posts from their main account, making is easy to earn reputation that you don't deserve (just create a sock puppet and upvote one of your posts, and create a new sock puppet for each post you want to upvote in order to bypass the serial voting reversal script). Even new users that don't want to do anything wrong intentionally may misuse their reputation by accident, for example posting a "thanks" or "me too" answer to a protected question or flagging an acceptable post as spam or offensive just because they don't know yet what's acceptable and what's not (if 6 new users do this, it would lead to an acceptable post being deleted and the owner losing 100 reputation). These are just examples of how giving bonus reputation to new users would make new user restrictions ineffective, I'm sure there are other examples.
If a user wants to get reputation, they need to prove that they can be trusted by posting good questions or answers or even by suggesting good edits. Even the first upvote (or the first two upvotes on questions) will unlock the basic privileges. Besides, users that are already trusted on other sites already get the association bonus.
Besides, if the point of your suggestion would be to encourage new users, I don't think it would be very effective. I don't think that reputation would encourage anyone if it could be earned for free. The whole reason why reputation is encouraging is because you did something to earn it: posted a good question or answer or suggested a good edit. On the contrary, if a user gets bonus reputation and then posts a bad question or answer that gets heavily downvoted would be even more discouraging since they would lose their bonus. It's better just to leave things the way they are, and then new users won't lose any reputation from their first downvotes since reputation can't go below 1. Currently, the only thing that would discourage them is that they didn't manage to post something that others found useful. With your suggestion, they would lose their bonus, which they would probably find even more discouraging.
b say, then all the privilege thresholds would be recalibrated by adding b - 1. E.g. commenting would now be 49 + b rather than 50.
Nov 16, 2017 at 13:01
Its worth remembering reputation is an entirely arbitrary number. A higher starting reputation isn't going to help a new user get settled in any way - whether its a free reputation bonus for being new (which makes little sense, since those privileges are easy to get, and we don't want spammers and trolls getting them), or shifting the 1 rep minimum to something else.
You're basically suggesting we hand a pile of fish rather than teaching folks to fish for themselves cause "otherwise they'd starve to death". Sometimes it results in fish dinners, and sometimes it results in a stinky pile of rotting fish. It certainly does not teach anyone how to fish.
Handing out free reputation for new users doesn't solve any underlying issue - it teaches them nothing, and dosen't help them ask better questions.
On the other hand - in addition to self help - spending the time to get to know a community and taking a more holistic approach beyond seeing SE as a place to ask questions, getting new users help in asking better questions seems to be a core DAG goal - with attempts to analyse question quality and a template for SO to help people ask better questions
The reason reputation is hard-earned is because it deters people from losing it by posting poor quality questions and answers. If there were starter bonuses the new users would be able to have more privileges which they could abuse.
By having reputation and privileges system it is clear who is serious and committed to the website. Those at higher levels of reputation are more trusted and therefore allowed more privileges.
If new users received starter bonuses then they would have access to these tools without having to show commitment to this website. This means that they could abuse this privileges.
It could also encourage new users not to get involved in the website. It may be found that when new users are getting starting bonuses and access to more tools they may not be active as they do not have to work for the privileges if they were given extra reputation as bonuses.
If new users are committed to the website and want to build up a reputation that then should happen soon enough. The main catchphrase around the website is "ask good questions, give good answers" If you can do this, you shouldn't have a problem building up your reputation
