It's a colossal pain trying to build reputation separately on each Stack Exchange site. The reason for this is supposedly that expertise differs across different subject areas. The common rebuttal is that most privileges are based on trust. My proposal is to split reputation into "trust", which is common across the entire Stack Exchange network, and governs things such as asking questions and commenting; and "expertise", which governs things such as answering questions and upvoting and downvoting, and is site-specific. This would make Stack Exchange less restrictive without diminishing quality.

A second problem is that new users often create answers on questions because they have insufficient reputation to comment. Reputation to comment really needs to be reduced.

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    I don't really see any benefit to this, at least not in the way you have described. The ability to ask questions, comment or answer questions requires such a minimal amount of reputation that it's not difficult to achieve on any site that you want to be a part of. What is the actual benefit to both the User (i.e. you) and to the site(s) to split reputation into different types as you suggest? – JonW Sep 30 '15 at 8:56
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    You are 10 rep away (on Stack Overflow) from earning the association bonus. When that happens, you'll automatically get access to basic privileges across the network. Good enough? – yannis Sep 30 '15 at 9:22
  • Ok, I couldn't resist. Enjoy your bonus. ;) – yannis Sep 30 '15 at 9:26
  • Neither asking, nor answering require rep currently. Are you suggesting they should? You'd need to show where every privilege would fit and why your proposal would be better than the status quo for it to be a useful question. Why does stackexchange need to be less restrictive for instance? – Robert Longson Sep 30 '15 at 9:57
  • I believe I have read similar feature request like this somewhere, and it was also downvoted to oblivion, but I couldn't find it... also, this case might be a counter-argument to why this request is okay. – Meta Andrew T. Sep 30 '15 at 10:46
  • I suppose that the real benefit is that it would be easier to start out on stack exchange because you have to build your first 200 rep on one site before you really get involved in others. Maybe a smaller association bonus at 25 rep for new users? – Issa Chanzi Nov 26 '15 at 0:00

What you're asking for is explicitly what the Association Bonus is for.

The idea is that once you've reached 200 reputation on any one site, you must have been using the site enough to know the basics of working with any Stack Exchange site. Thus, the "training wheels" can come off. You'll get 100 reputation points added to all of your existing Stack Exchange profiles, and any new sites you join you'll start at 101 reputation.

101 reputation points gives you access to:

  • 100 edit community wiki
  • 100 create chat rooms
  • 75 set bounties
  • 50 comment everywhere
  • 20 talk in chat
  • 15 flag posts
  • 15 vote up
  • 10 remove new user restrictions
  • 10 create wiki posts
  • 5 participate in meta

Of course, the ability to ask questions and post answers is granted at reputation 1. This also allows what seems to be the biggest pain point: adding comments.


Asides from the potential confusion and the hassle of setting up two sets of rep calculations, there is the fact that even those with the expertise need to earn trust on any site, just as would an enthusiast, student etc. Each community has differences, so the trust needs to be earned on each site separately.

An expert on one site is not necessarily an expert at another and would need to work harder to earn trust there.

It does not take much to earn that trust on each site - patience and perseverance.

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