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Feature requests: Sponsored Repuation

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorMike Jones
    • CommentTimeOct 24th 2010
     
    I would like to suggest adding the concept/feature of “sponsored reputation”. The idea is that new users could be awarded reputation by old users. How much reputation an old user could award would depend on the amount of reputation of that old user, and some maximum of such awarded reputation probably ought to be set.

    Here is a possible implementation of this idea: If user A has rep < 101, and user B has rep >= 1000, then user B can, if user B so wishes, add any amount from 1 to n of reputation points to the reputation of A, where n is the greatest integer contained in (rep of user B)/(1k).

    The intention is to prevent the embarrassing situation of an established well-known mathematician joining MO, only to find out that he/she cannot even make a comment!

    Regards,
    - Mike Jones
  2.  
    Your worry is largely unjustified. Whenever a well-known mathematician joins, people are usually so excited about the very fact of the well-known mathematician being on MO, that the user has no problems accumulating reputation very fast. See e.g. here; http://mathoverflow.net/questions/41253/who-fixed-the-topology-on-ideles
    Normal mortals like you and me still have to earn their reputation by asking good questions and providing good answers and will not be helped by their grandpa being on MO. And that's a good thing.
  3.  

    Also, the potential for abuse is high. A gives B enough points to upvote, at which point B upvotes all of A's questions and answers. Rinse and repeat.

    (Not to mention the standard disclaimers about the software being out of our control anyway, etc, etc,.)

  4.  
    High rep users can already add to the rep of new users : they can vote up their questions/answers.
  5.  

    If there were voting on meta, I'd vote up Andy's answer.

  6.  

    You see, in a way, it's very liberating to not be able to make large changes in the software. I don't even have to game out in my head whether this is a good idea or not. I understand the issue (I recently posted a question that was of interest to me and a coauthor, and he was annoyed by not having the rep to comment), but surely there are a lot of other things that are higher priority for changing if we ever have the power. By the way, the standard suggestion for this is to go post it on meta.SE. Which I do suggest.

    • CommentAuthorYemon Choi
    • CommentTimeOct 24th 2010
     

    Are we still nit-picking about typos on this thread as well, or have we agreed that this is not always necessary?

  8.  

    +1 to Ben. More power to the powerless!

    • CommentAuthorYemon Choi
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     

    Andrew, Ben: this reminds me of Orwell's "Inside The Whale" ...

    • CommentAuthorWillieWong
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     

    Considering how frequently we invoke the "software not under out control" mantra, why do we even bother with having a "Feature Request" category for meta posts?

    Perhaps I should file a feature request to remove the feature request category =)

  11.  

    meta.MathOverflow is not for comments about meta.MathOverflow. If you want to report a bug, suggest a feature, or discuss the dynamics of meta.MathOverflow, visit our meta-discussion forum, meta.meta.mathoverflow.net.

  12.  

    Willie:

    1. A few (very few) bits are under Anton's control. Basically, anything to do with CSS and javascript (as far as I can tell) seems to be okay, all else not.
    2. Back in the early days, core feature requests were sometimes implemented upstream and it was helpful to discuss them here a little before taking them to the Main Office.
    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     
    Willie, there is a remark about American history and expansion into the American West, that the perception that it was a possibility greatly reduced pressures in the Eastern cities, out of proportion to the relatively low percentage who actually went. I think the phrase "safety valve" goes with this. So I suggest feature requests, now difficult to implement, still may serve as a bit of a safety valve. For some reason I have the history lesson (middle or high school) fixed in my mind as originating or popularized by George Santayana, although his obituary makes me wonder how reasonable that might be:

    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890336-1,00.html
    • CommentAuthorWillieWong
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010 edited
     

    In view of Cam and Andrew's comments, we apologize for the earlier comment, those responsible having been sacked. And in view of Will's and this comment, those responsible for sacking those who have just been sacked have been sacked.

    • CommentAuthorYemon Choi
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     

    Willie: coincidentally, I am considering a holiday in Sweden next year. (Well, a conference at any rate.)

    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     

    «I am considering a holiday in Sweden next year. (Well, a conference at any rate.)»

    Be sure to pick a different wording on the grant application! :)

    • CommentAuthorYemon Choi
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     

    For any NSERC people reading: that was a reference to The Holy Grail; my papers are in order; I love my adopted country; why do you persecute me?

    (With apologies to Franz Liebkind)

    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010
     
    Yemon, I think you can minimize the persecution, on another thread, Jacques Carette is looking for a few good Canadians.

    http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/58636
  19.  
    Will, you may be thinking of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Hypothesis, see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis
    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeOct 25th 2010 edited
     
    Gerry, you got it, I put on Google, when I finally searched for the two pair "american frontier" "safety valve" and it came up Turner,

    http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~fe2r/papers/munich.pdf

    The reason I found nothing definitive before is that I kept putting in Santayana.

    So, Gerry, you are a smart man, don't believe what they tell you.

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