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From what I understand, the most reputation one can gain in one day from votes is 200 points. This limit ignores the bounties earned, so that it is possible to earn for example 250 points if a 50 points bounty is earned.

From what I understand, if one offers a bounty of, say 50 point, then that the net gain is maximum 150 points.

I have a suggestion: By offering bounties on questions, the bounty raises the daily limit by the amount offered. So if one offers a 50 points bounty, then one can still have a net gain of 200 points.

I believe that this would encourage people to keep answering questions even after they reach the daily limit

Also, I think that this would encourage more bounties and therefore possibly encourage better answers. In particular it would encourage awarding existing answers with a bounty. I don't see this causing an explosion in bounties since it only applies when the daily limit is reached.

If the general suggestion of raising the limit by offering any bounty is not a good one, then I suggest that specifically awarding bounties to existing answers will raise limit.

I understand that part of this suggestion is the assumption that more bounties are better. This might not be the case(?)

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    $\begingroup$ We have at the moment 64 featured question. That's already a lot IMHO. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Greinecker Mod
    Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 22:03
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelGreinecker: Ok, how then about just raising the limit one when awarding existing answers? $\endgroup$
    – Thomas
    Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 22:04
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    $\begingroup$ I don't understand. From what I understand, the system awards things in order. So if you earn 210 reputation (meaning you actually earn 200 and 10 disappears into the void), and then you offer a 50 point bounty (meaning the system now registers that you have earned 150 for the day), then you still can earn another 50 points if more people upvote you. Is this wrong? $\endgroup$
    – davidlowryduda Mod
    Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 22:09
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    $\begingroup$ @mixedmath: I believe that this is wrong. I had a day where I tried to do exactly what you describe and I was cut off at 150. $\endgroup$
    – Thomas
    Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 22:10
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    $\begingroup$ @Thomas: Thank you - yes, I see that this happened to you on October 10th. This is an interesting feature to understand. Unfortunately, I expect this to not be resolved - I suspect SE will consider this too much of a fringe thing. I'm uncertain if I disagree with that. But it is certainly interesting $\endgroup$
    – davidlowryduda Mod
    Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 22:14

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Technical point: the SE code does not attach any significance to bounty reasons. It's used only to produce a canned text explaining the reason to the bounty. In particular, one can set a bounty to "reward existing answer" on a question without answers (as I just did).

Some reasons why I do not support the proposal:

  1. It may result in random bounties or worse yet, in strategically placed bounties. Your answers get lots of upvotes today... use them or lose it... give +500 to some answers by your friends... and they'll return the favor when they hit the cap. I think this would distort the purpose of bounties.

  2. Daily cap is reached not only when a user posted a bunch of brilliant answers; it can also be reached by posting a picture of Batman, and having the post linked to from some popular site. In cases like these, I think the extra reputation points should be lost, because they were not deserved to begin with.

  3. Users who provide the best answers are not motivated by reputation, to the extent that it's sometimes hard to convince them to post answers as actual upvote-able answers. Conversely, I find that some rep-hunters are prone to posting mediocre two-liners as quickly as possible (Fastest Gun in the West Problem). If they stop doing that after hitting 200 points for the day, I consider that a good thing.

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