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The Association Bonus is awarded when one of your linked accounts has reached 200 reputation points, and as a result, all associated accounts are given a 100 point bonus. The bonus is awarded because you have proven that you know your way around the basic features of any Stack Exchange website and have demonstrated you are a good community member through being awarded community votes for your questions and answers. With those 100 extra points you can now comment, vote, flag and create bounties on all SE sites. From here on out, on any new sites joined will also be given this bonus.

I think this is an excellent award that promotes sharing of skills/knowledge between different sites without the painful earning of basic privileges.

I'd like to hear from the community whether they think the Association Bonus could be expanded to include accounts that have earnt over 500 reputation on their up to 5 sites (for example), or some other variation. Surely >500 reputation on up to 5 sites would demonstrate that the user has provided a useful contribution to the Stack Exchange network, and is equivalent to >200 reputation on a single site?

The aim of my question is to reward Stack Exchange users that spread their effort over multiple sites the same Association Bonus privilege as a user that dedicates their effort on a single site.

Declaration of Bias

I joined the wonderful Stack Exchange network 2 years, 10 months ago. I have been contributing to various sites when I get the time. I am a Stack Exchange evangelist amongst my friends and family because I find Stack Exchange is a system that somewhat recognises the time and effort of people who ask a question well or provide thorough answers.

However, while I would love to vote on answers and questions the numerous Stack Exchange sites, I have not yet managed to achieve the elusive 200 reputation to gain the afore-mentioned Association Bonus on any single site, because I have spread my effort over multiple sites. Unfortunately I often see this note when I try to vote on other sites:

enter image description here

My top four sites have a combined reputation of 600. My progress on each site is somewhat slow since I also have a bit of a penchant for answering old unanswered questions. I'll confirm this for anyone wondering, that this is not a good way to build your reputation quickly! I have also realised that some of the sites I frequent tend to be technical so many questions/answers on any given day have zero votes (e.g. Arduino) compared to other sites where there is not one question on any given day that does not have a vote, and many have over 5 (e.g. Interpersonal Skills) (i.e. reputation seems to be harder to earn).

Edit (a few months later)

Thanks all for the encouragement. I finally managed to find a few questions I could research answers for. The reputation boost made my eyes pop, until I realised that was total for all the sites I am a member of.

enter image description here

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  • I have received a couple of downvotes. I am very interested to know why users find this disagreeable: "My point is to give loyal users that spread their effort over multiple sites the same Association Bonus privilege as a user that dedicates their effort on a single site." (I'm more than willing to delete the question if the community doesn't like the question).
    – MechtEngineer
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 1:59
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    Distribution of effort doesn't prevent a user from making 200 in any of them, let alone several of them. Being able to do a little bit in many places is not the same thing as doing a large bit in one place, either.
    – Nij
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 11:22

1 Answer 1

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Well... That could have been a good suggestion...... But you missed one point (or mistook it): It really, really isn't that hard to acquire 200 rep on a single site...... Even if you spread your contribution across several sites, you'll earn 200 rep on a bunch of them very soon if you have enough activity.

Speaking of myself, I joined Stack Overflow in February 2016, but wasn't active until January 2017 when I joined Android Enthusiasts. I wrote a few decent answers, and it only took a week or so for me to reach 200 on Android.

I checked your profile. You have 71 rep on Stack Overflow, spread across 6 answers, with an aggregate of 4 upvotes and 2 accepts. That can't be said "active", honestly. So the primary concern isn't the spread your contribution, but your lack of overall activity.

Stack Overflow is the most active site on the Network. If you write a few more answers, it can be in a single day that you gain 200 rep, as well as a shiny bronze badge, "Mortarboard".

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  • I think you missed my point. Of course I can "play" the Stack Exchange system and get 200 points on one site. But why only reward those who dedicate their efforts to one site, and not users who spread their effort? Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I claimed to be an "active" user.
    – MechtEngineer
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 2:21
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    @MechtEngineer 200 reputation is not too difficult to earn. I earned 900+ rep from just five weeks of participating here.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 3:00
  • @Sonic (gparyani) You're an extraordinarily brilliant guy.
    – iBug says Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 3:45
  • OK. I think I'm getting the idea behind the downvotes. Users consider it relatively easy to earn 200 rep on a given site. Therefore, why reward someone who has chosen to spread their effort across multiple sites when it won't take too much effort for them to concentrate on a single site and get across the "Association Bonus 200 rep line"? Fair call. Two issues: 1) I often find easy questions are actually duplicates after 10 minutes of searching a variety of keywords (shoot my chance for rep). 2) On average, each of my answers represents around an hour of research. I'll put in the effort. :)
    – MechtEngineer
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 4:21
  • @MechtEngineer I updated my answer.
    – iBug says Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 4:29
  • @iDebug, a genuine thanks for the update. I agree with your reasoning (but am kicking myself for distributing my effort across multiple sites). I upvoted your answer, but of course my vote won't change the public vote score (due to a certain issue mentioned in the original question). I'm tickled by the irony :)
    – MechtEngineer
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 11:07
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    @MechtEngineer Again it's not the spread of your activity, it's the overall lack of it. There are a lot of people who participate in many sites and even gets tens of thousand of rep on each of them.
    – iBug says Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 11:24
  • @MechtEngineer if anything, the reward encourages participation on other sites (by making it easier to participate) so it wouldn't do to make the work required also do that.
    – muru
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 0:38

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