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Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems that the rules for the daily reputation cap are changed on a pretty regular basis, and it's got to a point where it's quite hard to get an idea of what its current state is.

I intuitively go to the FAQ for such info, but over there it's only referred to in passing, not once explained. Is it perhaps because the rules change so often that they're not in the FAQ - because it would too swiftly become outdated anyway? It appears that currently you have to stumble upon it to know that it exists at all.

Since there can be reputation changes that does not affect rep cap - such as accepted answers - it could even become a bit tricky to know when you've reached it. Ideally, I would like to see in the recent tab, "You have another 30 reputation to gain before your daily reputation cap for this date is reached" - where the emphasized text would be a link to a FAQ entry explaining the feature.

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They're not changed on a "pretty regular basis". I can remember 3 changes in the last 22 months - and two of those were effectively cancelling each other out in a fairly quick succession.

I agree that it wouldn't be a bad idea to explain it in the FAQ, but these days it's pretty simple:

  • You can gain up to 200 points from votes alone
  • Accepted answers and bounties are completely separate from the rep cap

That doesn't go into the details of "exceeded" vs "reached" on the rep report, but I don't think that should be in the FAQ anyway.

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  • I think exceeded and reached basically explain themselves. Reached means, 200 rep from votes. Exceeded means 200+ rep from votes AND an accepted answer or a bounty.
    – Tim Post
    Jul 21, 2010 at 10:04
  • Jon you would know this one. If you hit the rep cap, THEN have one of those answers accepted, will ALL the rep gain on that question be reinstated, or only the (exceeding cap) rep accrued after it was accepted?
    – devinb
    Jul 21, 2010 at 11:51
  • @Tim: I don't find that self-explanatory at all... because it means you can exceed the rep cap without reaching it. (I've exceeded it 4 more times than I've reached it.) That's extremely unintuitive IMO.
    – Jon Skeet
    Jul 21, 2010 at 14:42
  • @devinb: You'd only get the accepted answer bonus... so you'd be on 215 at that point.
    – Jon Skeet
    Jul 21, 2010 at 14:42
  • @Jon re: Tim. To be fair Jon, you could be considered an edge case. :p
    – devinb
    Jul 21, 2010 at 14:52
  • @devinb: No, I think several people have asked about this. In fact I've probably seen this less often than other people as I pretty much always reach the cap. Getting (say) 18 votes and 2 accepted answers in a day is unlikely to be very rare.
    – Jon Skeet
    Jul 21, 2010 at 15:08
  • @Jon - I think that just means you never 'reached' 200, you went from 190 to 225 (or a similar range). However, yes, that is completely confusing, since to exceed something, you must first reach it. I wasn't quite sure that was possible until you mentioned it actually :)
    – Tim Post
    Jul 21, 2010 at 15:10
  • @Tim: Not quite, it means that you received fewer than 20 votes over the day, but still exceeded 200 rep due to accepted answers or bounty. I think we've proved my point though :)
    – Jon Skeet
    Jul 21, 2010 at 18:49
  • @Jon, We've absolutely proved that I am now entirely confused on the matter, indeed.
    – Tim Post
    Jul 21, 2010 at 21:25
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Actually, it is documented in the FAQ on reputation on meta. The Q&A's tagged [FAQ] are linked from the SO FAQ in the last paragraph.

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