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I'm assiduously frequenting the Stack Overflow and Code Review sectors, where I got some reputation.
In the other hand I rarely visit Super User, because it doesn't match my skills, so for me it's a place for questions rather than answers. And obviously this gives much more less reputation!

Today I've posted a question and I didn'get any answer for now. So I'm considering placing a bounty, but I don't have many reputation in Super User, while I could easily use the one of SO or CR.

But since I couldn't find anything related to this possibility, neither in help pages nor in meta, I think it's currently not possible.
So I ask it differently: could it be an option to change the way the bounty mechanism works, in order to make it possible?

Note that, without this possibility, there is some kind of contradiction:

  • if we want to place a bounty it means we strongly need an answer
  • and the more we need an answer the more it frequently means we lack skills in the domain where we ask the question
  • so we have less chances to have reputation available in this domain
  • but reputation is required to place the bounty... so the circle is complete

EDIT, in response to comment and answer.

Yes I didn't post my question from many time, and I'm not so impatient. It's only that, once I realized it could remain unanswered, I have the idea to inquiry about what are my possibilities in that case.

In other words, I don't really plan to place a bounty now, but I'm curious about how it would turn if I wanted to do it.

In the other hand, I'm sorry if my question is not clear: as I'm not a native-English speaker, I don't know how to explain it better by my own: feel free to ask for additional explanation on any precise point.

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  • You only asked your question a few hours ago. And your question is not very clear.
    – DavidPostill Mod
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 17:57
  • @DavidPostill Please look at the edit in my question.
    – cFreed
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 18:22

2 Answers 2

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No, you cannot transfer reputation from one site to another for the purposes of giving bounties.

There are a few good reasons for this.

  1. Reputation or skill or knowledge in one field does not translate to knowledge in another. You could be a master in parenting but not know the first thing about how to turn a computer on. Allowing the transfer of reputation from one site to another would be attributing an implied level of knowledge or skill that may not be present.

  2. If we were to only allow this for bounties then it would give a method for people to transfer reputation across sites, possibly to sockpuppet accounts and then back or to elsewhere. This has a massive potential for abuse and could lead to people selling their reputation on one site to gain it on another.

While I concede that it would be nice to transfer reputation from one site to another because you really need the help and you want to get help now but you lack the site experience that could have gotten you rep, it would essentially break whatever value the reputation system has on a per-site basis. There would be no way to easily tell if that high rep user knows what he is talking about or if he just bought the reputation from friends or an account he had on another site.

Restricting reputation movement via bounties to a single site allows easier policing and gives much less scope for abuse.

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  • Thanks for this precise answer. Till now I never had the occasion to really ask myself about the purpose of the reputation mechanism. Now I realize that it's merely and exactly what its name suggests: allow everyone to become proud of his recognized skill regarding each SE site domain. Finally rather logic, and not surprising. Previously, though, what I'd imagined was that it might (also) be a good way to help to something like a service exchange, where rep would act as a kind of currency unit! But I admit that this would be somewhat inconsistent with its main purpose.
    – cFreed
    Commented Apr 17, 2016 at 20:02
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    @cFreed not to mention some communities are much more liberal with their voting than others.
    – Raystafarian
    Commented Apr 18, 2016 at 17:29
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First, be patient. Sometimes the right answer only comes after a few days or weeks. If you direly need on-demand support, a Q&A site is not the place to get it - contact your vendor about support agreement.

I'm not super enthused about the idea of allowing rep from other sites to pay for bounties. Bounties purchase attention for your question. When you've earned rep here, you've given to the community, and the bounty system is a way for this community to give back to you (in the form of extra eyes on your question). Your contributions to other sites are great, but in my opinion, it's the contributions to this site that matter here.

You can already do what you're after, in a way. When you get 200 reputation on any Stack Exchange site, you're guaranteed to start your membership at other sites with 101 rep instead of just 1. You can chop off the minimum bounty of 50 and still have enough rep to comment everywhere. (I've done this at Server Fault with success.)

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  • Thanks for your answer. Pleas look at the edit in my question.
    – cFreed
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 18:22
  • @cFreed Thanks for clarifying! I have revised my answer.
    – Ben N
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 21:22
  • You're right: in any case I will be able to place a bounty if I finally consider I need it. So my question is not really important (even for me) in practice. It rather comes from a "vision" I had about all the SE sites which might allow adepts to work together, exchanging information, each one using his skills to give solutions and getting solutions in domains where they lack skills. Something a bit like globalization. So don't mind!
    – cFreed
    Commented Apr 16, 2016 at 0:16

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