Regarding "rep inflation" from the recalculation and actions that require certain amounts of rep

Question

Now that apparently we're all going to be getting some sweet rep (or at least those of use who have asked positive questions), is there going to be any change to the rep required for, as an example, privileges? I can see myself suddenly getting a significant chunk of rep, and that may push me past the 25k boundary required for "Access to site analytics". I'm not any more knowledgeable than I was prior to the calculation though, so does this make sense?

Are rep boundaries like those for the association bonus, privileges, commenting etc. going to be adjusted? Or is this adjustment meant to more accurately reflect the site knowledge associated with asking a good question, so no change will happen?

Answer 1

I don't think recalculating the boundaries will be necessary since they're already pretty arbitrary - it's not as though a 19k user is clueless as to how the site functions, and magically transforms into a power user once they hit 20k rep.

If there is a concern that users that shouldn't have access to certain privileges are being given access all of a sudden, I would argue that a data-driven approach should be taken, involving evaluating both the correct thresholds for privileges and reputation values for various actions.

In my opinion, this would be overkill - but it's better than inflating all the reputation requirements by some random percentage for fear of the masses getting access to privileges, say, 20% sooner.

Answer 2

I don't think those reputation requirements are going to be changed;

For those of you that are getting new privileges: we ask you to take the responsibility reverently. You are the question experts. You are the people that can identify a question that is struggling and you know how hard it can be to on the other side of that keyboard. Thank you in advance for gently coaching question askers through their experience.

That's directly from the blog post, and it really seems to convey that the requirements are going to be suddenly much easier to achieve due to the recalculation. Hopefully, as a community, we can be responsible with our new privileges.

Answer 3

As this comment says, the boundaries for privileges at the low end, e.g., for up voting, flagging, down voting, etc., are likely more important to consider possibly changing. Now, by asking just one or two questions with some positive up votes, it'll be that much easier to get those privileges than before. I suggest considering increasing some of these, although I'm not sure what an appropriate amount would be.

However, one thing I think should be increased is for up voting. Also, as snakecharmerb's comment says, the threshold for "protected" questions should possibly be bumped up, say to 20, with the later comment making several good points in favor of this, e.g.,

... it not only stops very new users from adding low quality answers to popular questions, it also protects them from the consequences of doing so: downvotes and answer deletion. So upping the the protection limit would help new users onboarding experience I think. (Also, it would prevent the protection privilege, which requires 15,000 rep to earn - from being completely devalued.)

Also the minimum reputation of 5 for "participate in meta", can now be achieved even with a net negative score, so perhaps it should be increased to 10 or so as well, to make it more appropriate. Finally, if they're considering examining the reputation system, perhaps some privileges that are currently combined at one level, e.g., "Post more links, answer protected questions", should now have different privilege levels.

Answer 4

At this time, we don't have plans on our roadmap to adjust privileges.

Our moderators are aware that people will be receiving new privileges.

If we, or our moderators, discover anything concerning from the data we're monitoring, we will evaluate our next steps.

Answer 5

As a moderator - with a few exceptions, on a healthy site, with a good number of additional mods - its not that likely to matter.

On the broad scope of things - users who matter, either being exceptionally good, or requiring a fair amount of babysitting are actually relatively small compared to our overall userbase on SU or even MSE (which has been getting a lot more of my attention the past few weeks).

Practically - the worst users, who have their posts at zero or negative score, won't likely benefit too much from it. The rare user who has successfully managed to grind asking questions to reasonable reputation might - but from my experience, these are monumentally uncommon.

So practically speaking - hopefully I don't foresee much issues that I wouldn't have seen anyway. It's as much about the people as the numbers