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I see that now Web Apps is out of beta, the bar has been raised for rep to achieve community rights (voting, tools, etc). When we come out of Beta in two days, will people retain the rights that they have earned during the beta, or will everyone get reset to a new level, based on the new benchmarks?

I hope that the answer is that we keep our rights, otherwise our community is about to have zero people with access to tools (with only one user even close), and only 6 users who can vote to close (with a couple of users close). Note, I'm not counting moderators in either of those groups.

I asked over at webapps if they've noticed any negative effect of this yet, as they can no longer close a question with community votes and instead a mod must insta-close.

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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everyone will be reset to the levels required for a 'normal' site, presumably will be the same as https://stackoverflow.com/faq, which means you'll be able to do everything except delete closed questions, access to moderation tools

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  • 1
    See my update to question. I think that sucks for the community.
    – yossarian
    Oct 7, 2010 at 12:58
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    I'm not sure we've got the traffic or are old enough for those levels. Are those the ones that SO started with or did those change as the site grew? I can understand how it could be annoying to have a constantly shifting goal of how much rep you'd need though, if the benchmarks are related to site size...
    – yossarian
    Oct 7, 2010 at 13:10
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Just so people don't have to visit the Webapps FAQ, here are the normal reputation limits:

15      Vote up
15      Flag offensive
50      Leave comments†
100     Edit community wiki posts
125     Vote down (costs 1 rep)
150     Create new tags
200     Reduced advertising
200     Retag questions
250     Vote to close, reopen, or migrate your questions
1000    Show total up and down vote counts
2000    Edit other people's posts
3000    Vote to close, reopen, or migrate any questions
10000   Delete closed questions, access to moderation tools

(The advertising one doesn't apply to SE sites as they don't have advertising yet.)

For what it's worth, I think we're very close to being self-sufficient with respect to being able to close questions. Not counting the current moderators, there are 6 members who already have the necessary 3000, 4 of which I believe are still active, and another 7 members above 2500, so they'll be able to vote to close very soon.

In the meantime, we currently have 6 moderators and most of us check the site very frequently, so if you see a really egregious case but you've lost your close rep, you can always leave a comment and/or flag for moderator attention. Probably by the time we get through formal moderator elections, we'll have at least 20 members with enough reputation to vote to close, and that should be plenty.

The only thing we won't have are the 10k+ users, but I don't see a lot of people using the 10k tools anyway. They're not really that important until the site gets really busy (as in, questions don't stay on the front page for more than an hour or two).

If we do start to run into problems then it is possible to put the site back into "bootstrap mode" where all of the rep limits are lowered, but I would only recommend that as a last resort.

(P.S. I actually think that the tag creation limit should higher for this site, but as long as people are on the ball with retags, then we shouldn't have a big problem.)

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  • I too think we'll be just fine once we switch. I also think the tag creation limit being higher would be nice as well to prevent newcomers from doing crazy massive 200 question retaggings.
    – hobodave
    Oct 7, 2010 at 16:29
  • FWIW, while it might not seem like the mod tools are used very much, that's one of my main ways of keeping up with the site right now. I refresh the close/reopen mod page, check the hot questions for anything that needs edits (or cold questions for anything lacking answers that I might be able to help with) and then I refresh the main page. Just throwing it out there that at least someone is using the tools regularly (and I will lose that when out of beta, for about 8 months if my personal rep vs time math is correct). No biggie from my end, just an extra perspective on things.
    – stephennmcdonald
    Oct 7, 2010 at 16:44
  • That's good to know, @stephen. I think that at present, questions don't get bumped off the front page/questions page that fast, so it probably shouldn't be too hard to find those hot/cold questions. I'm glad to know that at least some people are using the Close/Delete pages and I suppose there's no substitute for that; by the same token, several of our members are really just starting to get used to the idea of closing/editing/retagging period, so we don't necessarily want to give them tactical nuclear weapons. Also, if the site grows over time, you should accrue rep quicker as well.
    – Aaronut
    Oct 7, 2010 at 17:04
  • Yeah, I haven't had much problem keeping up because of how slowly things move off the front page - between work and my phone, I'm on the site every hour or two anyway. Was just a nice thing to have access to for convenience, but as you said - if the site does grow quickly I should be able to get the rep quickly enough.
    – stephennmcdonald
    Oct 7, 2010 at 17:25
  • One suggestion by @yossarian in the chat room today was the idea of grandfathering in abilities as they stand now, for X amount of time after the beta ends (say 6 months); by that time we should have more users with higher reps. Seems like a good compromise, but also a pretty major change to the code base so I'm not sure how feasible it is, but I thought it was worth mentioning in this thread.
    – stephennmcdonald
    Oct 7, 2010 at 17:28
  • It is a good idea, @stephen, although I can't comment on what it would take to implement. My off-the-cuff estimate is "longer than it would take for you to actually get the rep." You can always propose it as a [feature-request] on MSO, though, see if/how the team responds.
    – Aaronut
    Oct 7, 2010 at 18:39
  • Yeah, your estimate was about on par with what I was thinking :) I'll talk to @yossarian next time I catch him in chat and see if he wants to submit it or if I should steal his thunder and go ahead and do it, but I'm not gonna hold my breath for it, it seems like a pretty big change. Meanwhile I'll just have to become even more active on here to get my rep up there!
    – stephennmcdonald
    Oct 7, 2010 at 19:19
  • @stephen: Visiting the site 50 times a day instead of 25 isn't going to increase your rep much at this point. ;) You might have to start asking more questions!
    – Aaronut
    Oct 7, 2010 at 19:44
  • @Aaron...touche! I actually do have a million questions I think to ask while cooking, but forget by the time I'm back at the computer. Looks like I need to put a notepad in the kitchen for a while. And your estimate of 25 times a day right now is pretty low! ;)
    – stephennmcdonald
    Oct 7, 2010 at 19:47
  • I'll pose the suggestion @stephen. No need for you to try and steal my thunder....again. ;)
    – yossarian
    Oct 8, 2010 at 12:54
  • @hobodave, The create tag rep limit is kind of weird. That looks like the only rep limit that hasn't moved in to line with SOFU. Is that a typo or oversight? Seems a little weird to change everything except that one.
    – yossarian
    Oct 8, 2010 at 12:56
  • @aaron, should I add a feature request here or on stack overflow?
    – yossarian
    Oct 8, 2010 at 13:18
  • @yossarian: Since it would be common to all or most Stack Exchanges, I would probably post it on MSO (not SO). Major changes discussed on individual SE sites usually tend to either fall by the wayside or cause mass panic when implemented for other sites.
    – Aaronut
    Oct 8, 2010 at 14:18
  • I added the question on MSO if anyone is interested in weighing in: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/…
    – yossarian
    Oct 8, 2010 at 21:33

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