What's the point of having to accumulate rep separately across all these sites? There is clearly a very large overlap between the communities and if people find you trustworthy on one site, then you're probably still trustworthy on the others. I don't see the point in making people start over from scratch again.
Well, why not merge the reputation?
It's an interesting point. I think it depends on how you view reputation. Some say that it is a measure of trust, others expertise. If you're in the former camp, I don't see how you can argue against this suggestion, if you're in the latter, I don't see how you can't.
I personally think rep is a bit of both and therefore, linking it across sites isn't necessarily going to be useful. However, the privileges that rep awards users aren't necessarily based on anything but trust in my opinion and therefore I see no reason why privileges couldn't be linked except that they're tied so closely to rep.
Each site deals with its own specific niche. If you're trusted on one site there's no reason you should be given benefit of the doubt about your knowledge on other topics. If you're skilled in different areas you should be able to gain rep on all 3 sites. If you're not, users shouldn't be given the impression that you are.
If you've gained 10k rep on SO, there is a high likelihood you understand what questions and behavior are valid and acceptable on SO. However, that doesn't mean you know the first thing about what questions should be valid and what behavior is acceptable on SF or SU. They're all separate sites, with separate focuses, and therefore they trust each user based on their involvement with that site.
Different types of questions/answer deserve different reputation. It's that simple.
An alternative would be to split reputation points into two parts:
reputation for expertise on a particular topic, for things like answering a question correctly
overall reputation for trustworthiness across Stack Exchange sites, for doing community-related things, like editing for spelling and grammar
It's silly for someone who has thousands of reputation points in a one community to not be able to even comment on another community.
Rep is a measure of trust, and yet, most of us are only knowledgeable on a subset of the topics covered on SO. I am knowledgeable about Python, C, C++ but not Ruby, Java, databases, iPhone... I have enough rep points that I could make a nuisance of myself on questions that I know nothing about, but I don't abuse my privileges.
SO trusts me not to abuse my rep privileges on topics I don't know about. So it would be nice to be trusted more on other SE sites too.
While there is an overlap, there is enough of a difference to make someone who could trusted by StackOverflow not trusted by ServerFault (say).
As developer I'm trusted (to a degree) on StackOverflow, but not on ServerFault - which is how it should be as I know very little about system adminstration. I know a little bit more about managing my own PC so I should be able to answer questions on SuperUser and gain some trust.
I think the SO and SO meta sites are the exception. Afterall one is a discussion about the other. I wouldn't credit a user on serverfault based on their rating on SO or superuser.
I had the same thought after reading Feedback for The Loop - June 2020: Defining the Stack Community
I wrote an answer:
I've been trusted to make thousands of no-review edits on Stack Overflow. When Google randomly lands me on Super User, I want to make those same edits there too to improve that site and the Stack Exchange network as a whole.
I want to participate all across the Stack Exchange network, but can't because there's no concept of higher-rep cross-site trust beyond the 100 point Reputation Bonus.
Which received an encouraging staff comment:
You make a good point, and having more of an intrinsic connection between the different sites on the network (especially the tech sites like the ones that you list which are so closely related) is definitely one of the areas that we have earmarked for further exploration and discovery in the coming months.
– Yaakov Ellis ♦ Jun 21, 2020
I'm hopeful that some solution to solve this problem is in the works.
Issa Chanzi (56 tr, 3 sp)
Maybe, rather than reputation, we have trust and specialisation. Trust could be network-wide, and specialisation could be site-specific. Then, posts by people with high specialisation could be bumped to the top. The current system is kind of annoying, because I had to delete one of my posts when it was losing reputation. I would rather not have to worry about losing my privileges because my answer didn't work.
Sorry for bringing this back to life but i think its a valid contemporary issue. I am on an SE Site where i asked multiple questions and got no reply. And I can't use bounties because i only have 70 rep left.
On other sites I have as much as 617, 423. Which i rarely use.
Either reputation should be combined or else the bounty mechanism should be rethought.
My activity is in the Ethereum StackExchange, which is already in itself a complicated SE
Reputation is not an indication of trustworthiness. It's an indication of ability. Ability translates into trustworthiness. I have great ability when it comes to programming (high rep on SO) and terrible ability when it comes to server-management (very low rep on SF). For this reason, I should not be granted a mirage of ability on SF.
I said it once in the past, giving a great programmer high rep on SF is like giving a wonderful plumber a high-paying Medical position.
Here is my take on this: I think the reason why someone with a certain number of rep points wants them merged to another site is most probably because he wants some permissions he won (at least that is what I want :P)
For example, I have enough rep points to edit SO questions, but not enough for gamedev. Since I have proved that I know how the system works, I don't see why I can't help the gamedev site.
However, the problem right now is that the reputation of a user mostly represents his quality of answers or questions and not his involvement on the community.
I don't agree. I am a good programmer, and my SO rep points at that, but I know nothing (relatively) about network administration and servers, and my SF reputation points at that. Ok, rep != knowledge. If Linus Torvalds joins SO today, he will have less reputation than John Doe who just started programming, but still...
I think rep is a measure of trust and collaboration effort. If rep measures collaboration effort, then someone who has a strong collaboration effort on SO does not imply a strong collaboration effort on SF. We could, however, have a "SE network" collaboration effort, which is the sum, or better the average.
Compared to'09 when the question was asked, I believe more sites with strong topic overlap have emerged.
Clusters of sites where high-rep users should be more trustable on other sites:
IT-related:
Smaller clusters could be
Again, this does not imply an expert in one of those is an expert in all, just that someone who earned trust in one can be trusted much more than 100 points on the others. The 100 points are useful for simple content generation, but not for content curation, reviews, cleaning up, and having a useful account identity across different but highly related stack sites.
