# What's the daily reputation record?

My understanding is the most reputation one can gain in one day from votes is 200. But, through accepted answers, they can get another 15 per accepted answer. So, technically, there is no limit.

Is there any way to find the record (so far) for most reputation gained by one user in one day, not counting bounties (or, a separate record where bounties are included would also be interesting)?

I noticed Brian M. Scott achieved 425 (so 200 on votes plus 15 accepted answers) on June 7, 2012.

Also, if bounties are included, I have seen that Timur had 650 on August 23, 2012.

An update, below Ragib has found a daily total of 749 by Did on August 25, 2012, which included a bounty.

• Why is this of interest? Anyone with competent undergraduate level knowledge can earn whatever rep they desire by picking cherries all day long. Rep is rarely a measure of pedagogical quality. It is mostly a measure of how quickly one can give a halfway-decent answer. MSE would have much higher quality answers if some folks were not so caught up in the rep game. Often the best answers have fewest votes simply because they weren't quickest. Consequently, some of our best teachers are not on the front rep page - truly a shame. Perhaps someday a better designed platform will remedy this. – Gone Sep 11 '12 at 14:50
• @BillDubuque I think you mean "Why is this of interest to Bill Dubuque?" or more accurately, "I'm Bill Dubuque and I don't care about this topic." I find all sorts of statistics interesting. And, you by far underplay the role of rep. With people like you and Andre and Arturo and Brian and a bunch of other heavy weights answering half the questions on the site, which I'm not complaining about, it's very hard for someone to get a huge amount of rep unless they really know what they're doing. Brian had 15 accepted answers in one day. You can't do that with a "competent" level of undergrad. – GeoffDS Sep 11 '12 at 15:59
• It helps that Brian is retired :) – GeoffDS Sep 11 '12 at 16:00
• Or, going to a bigger site, Stack Overflow, I certainly find it interesting that Jon Skeet managed to get a 400 bounty + 18 accepted answers (I think) in one day, ending up with 871 rep in one day. I even found a day where he had 636 rep without a bounty, AND that includes one person unaccepting an answer from a previous day for -15. I think I see 30 accepted answers that day. Reputation for some questions is not a good measure, the Batman equation for example. But, for other questions, it is. On those, the best answers get the most votes and the crappy answers get very few votes. – GeoffDS Sep 11 '12 at 16:06
• My point is simply that if one discouraged folks from getting caught up in the "gaming" aspects of the software, then the quality of the answers would improve immensely, and we might attract many more good teachers. Many excellent teachers have no interest in playing the rep game. It may drive away good teachers, when they see inferior quicker answers get most of the votes. Drawing attention to such stats does not help in that regard. – Gone Sep 11 '12 at 16:45
• @BillDubuque It's also possible that if the gaming aspects didn't exist, that a lot of people wouldn't participate as much, and we could lose quality in that way as well. These rules are here for the reason that it encourages people to participate. Some "bad" people will contribute more often because of it. Some "good" people will too. If a "good teacher" came on here and actually gave it a chance, I really doubt they are going to be scared off because their answers didn't get as many votes on some questions... unless they are big babies. – GeoffDS Sep 11 '12 at 20:13
• Plenty of folks (including many on our front page) participated just as heavily in other general-level math forums (e.g. usenet newsgroup sci.math) where there was no rep or gaming aspects. So rep/gaming is not necessary to attract talent. But I do know of more than a few very good teachers who were alienated by the gaming aspects of the SE platform. Perhaps that would not have occurred if it had been designed differently, e.g. employing multi-dimensional votes. – Gone Sep 11 '12 at 21:17
• @Bill: It’s not just gaming: it’s also a measure of how effective one’s explanations have been. It’s a crude measure, to be sure, but it’s still useful feedback. I don’t need it $-$ I was a regular on the Usenet groups alt.math.undergrad and alt.algebra.help for years and still check them for serious questions, though they’re pretty nearly defunct now $-$ and it doesn’t affect my choice of questions or how I answer them, but I still enjoy having a productive day recognized as such. (Though I didn’t realize that I’d ever broken $400$.) – Brian M. Scott Sep 12 '12 at 2:04
• @Graphth: Being retired does indeed help. :-) – Brian M. Scott Sep 12 '12 at 2:05
• I also participated in various math foras, I used to edit Wikipedia. I have to admit the badges and reputation do work as an incentive for me. (Although I know that they do not mean anything in the real world, they give me some feeling of reward/recognition. Similar to "thank you" button in some phpbb-based foras. This is totally different, for example, from the effort you put in improving Wikipedia article, which usually goes unnoticed.) BTW seeing how many comment were mad on this topic, perhaps it would be worth opening a separate thread for discussion about this? – Martin Sleziak Sep 12 '12 at 5:58
• – Mechanical snail Sep 12 '12 at 7:51
• Care bear mentioned in chat that no identity gained 778 points on May 24, 2014, the single-day record. Query: Most rep in a single day However I only see 728 on this users reputation page for that day. – Martin Sleziak Oct 13 '14 at 13:37
• @MartinSleziak He gained 778, but also spent 50 on a bounty, for net change of 728. – user147263 Oct 13 '14 at 14:35

## 1 Answer

On each users profile under the reputation tab we can display the reputation they have gained by post, time or graph. Under the primary graph is one which displays the entire reputation record over the duration of their membership along with a grey line indicating the 200 reputation mark. It is clear if someone has a chance of breaking either record (most rep with/without bounties) as their peak must be at least twice the height of the grey line. If any of the bars seem tall enough, you can drag your mouse across to highlight the relevant region to display that information on the primary graph. Clicking the tallest bar displays how the reputation was earned, so we can check for bounties.

I performed this procedure for every user on the first page of the reputation list. Of this group, the highest reputation earned in any day was 749 by @did, on the 25th of August, 2012. He received a bounty of 500 reputation on that day. The highest reputation earned in any day not including any bounties is, as the OP noticed, 425 reputation earned by @Brian M. Scott on 7th of July, 2012.

It seems very likely to me that Brian's record represents the true record over all users, as most people who are capable of producing 15 high quality and accepted answers in a day are on the front page. I am slightly less confident about did's record, as there is a chance someone on the 2nd or 3rd page earned a 500 reputation bounty, had 20 upvotes and 4 or more accepted answers.

• +1 for great research! Thanks, that's awesome. – GeoffDS Sep 11 '12 at 11:57