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I just noticed that the Community user has 5 rep instead of their normal 1 rep. Is this some weird bug or normal/expected behavior? If it is normal then what is the reason to give Community more rep on Meta. Note that Community only has one rep on our main site and on Meta.SE.

community has five rep

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    Moderators can't access Meta sites unless they have 5 reputation... perhaps that's it.
    – ArtOfCode
    Mar 25, 2016 at 16:56
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    @ArtOfCode Interesting... That probably explains it, but it begs the question of why moderators can't access meta sites with less than 5 rep and how a (non-community) moderator could have less than five rep. Presumably a moderator would have enough rep somewhere to get the association bonus
    – Erik
    Mar 25, 2016 at 16:59
  • Those are the assumptions SE made in designing the system (that moderators would 99.9999% of the time have enough rep), which is why that's the only privilege that moderator status doesn't override.
    – ArtOfCode
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:00
  • @ArtOfCode I never thought of the community user as a user that needed to adhere to the rep rules. If you can find a reference that supports your comment I'll gladly up-vote and accept your answer. As an aside even though 4 rep is exceedingly small, I don't understand why that limit is in place at all. That's a separate question though which probably has to do with a spamming problem knowing how the interwebs work....
    – Erik
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:06
  • The 5-rep limit is indeed because of spam... it halves the number of sites we have to work to protect. I can't actually find a reference for my comment - I believe I found out about it from a conversation (with a dev?) in the Teachers' Lounge, which is unquotable.
    – ArtOfCode
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:17
  • @ArtOfCode A side effect is that it prevents suspended users posting on the meta site. For some reason I always imagined that was the reason for the limit.
    – Martin Smith
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:23
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    Related (unanswered) on meta.SE: Is Community ♦ supposed to have 1 rep?
    – Paul White Mod
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:23
  • Also: Help Center > Privileges > Participate In Meta. Perhaps Community is given 5 rep on per-site metas to avoid possible bugs. Dunno. Seems like the sort of thing nervous/paranoid SE devs might do.
    – Paul White Mod
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:36
  • @PaulWhite I would have agreed until I read your linked above. It appears as if 5 rep isn't universal. Some Community users have 3 rep, and I assume they can still function as normal...
    – Erik
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:41
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    Hence me not adding an answer. Perhaps Community managed to lose 2 rep? I don't know. I am curious to find out though :)
    – Paul White Mod
    Mar 25, 2016 at 17:43
  • + NINE THOUSAND
    – John Militer
    Oct 30, 2017 at 23:39

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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We try to never let the bots earn rep, but this one became sentient. I challenged Community to a battle of epic proportions and removed the extra 4 reputation by force. Lesson learned: never trust robots

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    I was rooting for you the whole time. +1 for humanity.
    – Erik
    Mar 25, 2016 at 21:27

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