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I just had this noble idea of increasing the rep-cap limits and vote limits for the duration of the crisis.
Questions and answers are upvoted hundred of times. There is so much reputation that goes lost due to the rep-cap. And there are also so many comments to upovote.
I think we should at least double the limits so that there is something good out of it.
Yes please. That little gray line is stunting my potential growth!
Let's not. Most of that rep ^ came from just one answer...
I don't feel that it's a fair gain, as I really didn't do much for it. We don't need more rep that's easily obtained. There's nothing to gain from more users getting more privileges from activity in controversial posts.
Maybe this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I do kinda disagree here (and this is coming from someone who's rep-capped eight times and counting over the last couple of weeks; I've missed out on . . . a couple thousand more rep points, at last count).
It's not really fair (or, sometimes, safe) for someone to gain a whole bunch of privileges just from one or two really popular posts. That's not really a measure of how well they know the community, or how much time they've put into it, or expertise, or trust, or any of the things that reputation measures.
Heck, it would be ludicrously easy for someone to make a couple of drama-filled posts, gain a ton of rep, and then abuse the site privileges if they came in with bad intentions. This sort of thing - as well as just innocent folks gaining lots of privileges from a post or two - is mitigated by the rep cap.
Let's keep those safeguards around. Folks have plenty of opportunities to participate and gain rep as it is; I don't remember the last time Meta was this active for this long. But removing rep caps . . . that's a bit much.
(Lest you think of me as a gatekeeper, I'll go back to sulking about all that lost rep for a bit. I'm fine with the rep caps, even if I've been affected by them.)
Now more than ever, during the ever escalating crisis, people are creating throwaway accounts intended to do nothing more than start fires without consequences.
We don't want those types of users gaining reputation too quickly for the reasons stated here.
TL/DR - If the forest is already on fire, it's probably unwise to throw twigs on it.
These kinds of situations are exactly WHY the rep cap is there in the first place. The point is that saying something with strong agreement shouldn't blow other contributions out of the water. That's no less true now than any other time and now the sheer quantity of votes makes it doubly true.
I'd be more inclined to remove the limit other times and only impose it times like this than I would be to remove it now. (Though I think it makes sense all the time.)
I'm pretty new around here but the point for upvotes and downvotes are a sign that answer is helped to make someones life/job/ideas better. I believe we're not in front of a slot machine to get as much coins as we can. All we do, at least what I learned from this community, is to help eachother out. Upvotes are only making me feel like a one person that I helped with is just thanking me with a handshake.
Community should not support the ones that are trying to get coins out of a out of order slot machine.
