Graduation lifts the required amount of reputation for privileges. Now what?

Question

When browsing other stacks, I noticed that there is a major difference in the amount of reputation required to have particular privileges. Whereas at CogSci we gain moderator tools at 2000 rep, you cannot even cast close votes at Cross Validated (you need 3000, as opposed to 500 at Cogsci).

The problem is also discussed here. If we graduate in the following year, this may seriously affect:

1. the amount of people that can control the quality of the questions and answers

2. the motivation of people to gain reputation. I think this is the case due to the setback in privileges and increased difficulty to regain them. For instance, I would need 8000 rep points more to get at the same level as I am currently.

Do we even want to graduate? If yes, how are we going to handle these issues?

Answer 1

First, what makes you think we will graduate any time soon? The site stats in Area51 are overall okay, but not sufficient.

Before heading off - here's my identical question on Bio when the graduation of Bio was announced.

Secondly,

the amount of people that can control the quality of the questions and answers

Yes, people will loose privileges. That's the game. But the most important privilige is close voting and 3k rep is enough. You're almost there! But yes, other users hovering at around 1k will have to go through some effort to regain their privileges.

Concerning

[T]he motivation of people to gain reputation

Personally, the fact I lost my mod privileges over at Bio was the biggest drive for me to start rep mining. I never gained rep so fast just after graduation... It may well have been one of the best motivators ever. Gaining a privilege is nice, yes, but loosing them by the dozen is terrible! And the dedicated user will want to have them back, desperately, and as quick as possible :)

Further, if you worry - start rep farming now! Build up your buffer up to the 3k point and you'll have the most important privilege secured.

Do we even want to graduate? If yes, how are we going to handle these issues?

Yes! And what to do to counter the loss - Start rep mining now :)

Answer 2

I agree with @AliceD.

If you look at some of the more recently graduated science sites(e.g., Biology, Chemistry, etc.). They are getting 10, 15, 20 or more questions per day, and generally providing good answers and so on.

Our site is ticking away often with more like 3 or 4 questions per day. We get reasonable traffic and we've been around for a while.

So I think we're doing okay, but to graduate I imagine we'd have to move up to another level. And if we had 10 to 15 questions per day that were consistently being answered, then the collective rep would build up much more quickly on the site, and we would start to see enough people with enough rep that the change in thresholds wouldn't matter so much.

Answer 3

I agree with Jeromy and Alice's assessment, but would just like to re-iterate that this question may be putting the cart before the horse.

I would prefer to delay graduation until:

1. We've changed our name to something more sensible.
2. We have a new close vote reason for poorly researched and lacking context questions.