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I've always been told that hitting the 100k reputation threshold gets you a nice swag package from Stack Exchange - regardless of mod status, and except possibly on Stack Overflow where 100k reputation users are apparently two a penny.

Yesterday I passed 100k reputation on Science Fiction & Fantasy, and last night I received a congratulatory email from Stack Exchange, but it didn't mention swag at all:

It's not often we get to reach out and thank someone individually for their contribution to a site, but we wanted to take this time to congratulate you for reaching 100,000 reputation on Science Fiction & Fantasy! To be in the top, top rankings among the millions of Stack Exchange users puts you in some really elite company.

Hitting a milestone like this is a great opportunity to take a step back and remember what the points are really about. It's not just the tens of thousands of community members who took the time to upvote your posts; it's the uncounted millions of people — yes millions — who have also learned (and will continue to learn) from what you've given so selflessly.

Once again, thank you for generously contributing your time, your passion, and your knowledge. You've made the Internet better for all of us.

And for that, you should feel incredibly proud.

Robert Cartaino
Director of Community Development Stack Exchange Inc.

Is there a big logjam due to the change in swag suppliers, and another email about swag will come later? Did SE decide that 100k reputation users on the entire network are now too common to be sending swag packs to all of them? Have they already sent me too much stuff and decided to prioritise people who didn't get a swag pack before? Was it all just a fairy tale?


Sorry if I'm coming off as impatient. If there's no swag pack, for whatever reason, that's fine - I'd just like to know what to expect.

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  • I guess the one you got is automated email, and the one for swag will be sent manually by a CM who will handle it personally.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 9:33
  • Just for reference - the last paragraph I got for 100k on SO on Feb 21st was: Words cannot express how much we appreciate what you've done for this community. You've worked hard, and you deserve a lot of credit for what you accomplished. We hope you've found the experience rewarding in your own way. But getting a big ole box of cool stuff from our sites is also a fun way to mark the occasion, so we put together a collection of swag for you. It's just a small token of our appreciation for everything you've done....
    – Jon Clements
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 9:56
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    (I'm fairly sure swag applies to other sites... I think I remember animuson/jnat saying a while back they were clearing out swag and looking towards new stuff at some point... so I'd guess they've re-worded it in the mean time to avoid disappointment... but a staff member would have to confirm that for sure...)
    – Jon Clements
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 9:58
  • Thanks for sharing the email. (I didn't get mine, so now I know what it would have said.)
    – Monica Cellio Mod
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 20:09
  • Just as a side note, I recently passed the 250K milestone, and I can confirm there is no mention of swag.
    – Tim Biegeleisen
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 23:49
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    @MonicaCellio Just for completeness, the title was "Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange — You're killing it." Which sounds ambiguous, but hopefully they don't think I'm killing the site off ;-)
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Jun 5, 2019 at 8:22
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    Heh, interesting title. I don't have email that matches that now, though it's been six months since I hit 100k so if it ended up in a spamtrap it's gone now. But I whitelist all the usual SE/SO domains, so... oh well, nothing we can do about it now. (It would have been my first, so I guess I'm feeling a little sentimental.)
    – Monica Cellio Mod
    Commented Jun 5, 2019 at 15:09
  • @MonicaCellio Maybe MSE is just different - especially since most of the top users here are employees of the company. Ah well, you'll just have to post more Workplace answers, or find a way to transfer rep between sites :-)
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Jun 5, 2019 at 15:15

1 Answer 1

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Eventually, yes, they will. We removed references to the swag form we used to send users to (and closed the form itself) because we are still in the process of setting up our new swag vendor and we're still not sure what the process is going to look like moving forward.

Ideally, that process won't involve sending your information to us at all, especially not inserting it into a weird Google Form. We're hoping that we'll be able to send users directly to the vendor in order to receive their swag, but again, we're still working out all those details.

At some point when all that is figured out, we'll reach out to everyone who passed the milestones or were already in our swag queues with information on the new process and how to get their swag. But for now, it doesn't make sense to mention it in the email.

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  • 1
    Thanks for the clarification!
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Jun 5, 2019 at 8:22
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    Is this still being "figured out" or has swag effectively been cancelled?
    – hayd
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 21:14
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    @hayd Last I heard, the vendor setup was complete and we were investigating ways to integrate directly with our system without human intervention (and the delays that come with having humans do things). But I'm not actively involved in the swag process anymore. There will likely be other swag-related announcements whenever all that is figured out.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 22:14
  • It seems like waiting on the system to remove the delays has introduced substantially more delay than will ever be incurred in the future. After 9 months of nothing, I'm interpreting "Eventually" as "No".
    – Ryan Cavanaugh
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 21:49
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    @RyanCavanaugh You're assuming there wasn't already massive delay in the first place. Swag processing was so time consuming for us that swag requests often sat around in queue after filling out the form for upwards of 6 months before we got around to processing them. Nobody wants to do this manually, so the best option was to get someone to develop an automated way. If the only option is "go back to doing it manually" then the response very likely would be "well then we're not doing it anymore."
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Oct 17, 2019 at 21:57
  • Fair enough. Thanks for the info!
    – Ryan Cavanaugh
    Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 6:51
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    For anyone else finding this: definitely cancelled. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/341192/…
    – Steve Bennett
    Commented Feb 10, 2020 at 5:50

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