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Why do we lose reputation when someone downvotes one of our example questions?

From my point of view (as a very inexperienced Area 51 user), the point of posting example questions is to establish the scope of potential new sites, so I might decide to deliberately post a question that I think is outside the scope or debateable in order to help the community decide what is acceptable. Losing rep when these deliberately bad example questions are downvoted seems like punishing a user for helping the community define its boundaries.

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The Area 51 code was derived from our main Q&A model, but the concept of "reputation" is not a perfect fit for what we are trying to accomplish here. Area 51 is not a knowledge-building Q&A site where you're necessarily supposed to show off your prowess as an avid "expert site builder." So the rewards aren't really focused on the reputation you get, but site you are trying to build.

So, long story short, much of the functionality was retained from the main Q&A to make this process work. A good question (voted for "I'd like to see this question on the site") gets up-voted (+5). A less helpful question (voted "I'd rather not see this question") takes a small hit (-2). But overall, there isn't nearly as much focus the reputation model as you might see in one of our main Q&As.

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    That makes sense. Reputation is a holdover from the other StackExchange sites, but the real rewards come from seeing a topic you care about get its own site. Thank you!
    – Kevin
    Commented Mar 3, 2014 at 19:13
  • -1. Can't quite agree here as downvoting is allowed for people not following a proposal and has no limit on it (thus is no scarce and valueable resource). That simply does not fit together well.
    – gwr
    Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 17:03

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