The global recalc happened arround Feb10. They applied the new policy retroactively. My reaction was ffs.. how can I actually get credit for the participation. Theres no value in supporting the site other than the reputation you have. The reputation should reflect on how helpful you are. The karma you get there is helpful to demonstrate to employers how well you can help others, thats a little difficult to explain how your score just got deflated.
There were users who were earning huge swatches of rep by asking hundreds of questions and giving little back in return.
I lost ~1k in rep back when I was >20k, and 1k back then (relatively speaking) was a fair old chunk. It was disappointing at the time but it was the right thing to do.
Asking valid and relivant questions is important, it contributes to the community. However, it is acceptible to reward answers more. [Since they do take more work]. Its their site (despite most of the site's value is derived from the work of the users), so their determination on whats important is up to them. However, they applied this retroactively. That irked me, if they had a system where they applied it after x date, that would be fine.
That decision told me... hey tomorrow they can just decide that all users with name x, y, or has numbers in the name can go bankrupt on reputation.
That was the only truly contentious user impacting change they've made over the four years the site has been around. I think your last sentence is a nonsensical justification to complain.
If anything many of the recent changes have been to make the site more inclusive such as suggested edits, better review processes and so on, so that users who are still on their training wheels on the way to the the 10k and 20k tools can practice "community moderation" under the guidance of more experienced users.
'If you're actively participating on Stack
Overflow, we now have another way to convert
those slices of effort into something that
actively furthers your professional goals
Stack Overflow Careers.' Coding Horror.
Its easier to make a comparision of accounts if the employer is using Stackoverflow Careers. But if you have a general reference to your rep amounts on your resume thats much more difficult to explain why you don't have a decent amount of rep, or if the employer is clever.. they may notice a difference in rep from an older copy of your resume and current.
"... if the employer is clever.. they may notice a difference in rep from an older copy of your resume and current. ..."
may/maynot & explainable. Would and employer look at a third party like that without looking closer at the candidate? Or are they using the suspect rep numbers as a basis of exclusion?
The global recalc happened arround Feb10. They applied the new policy retroactively. My reaction was ffs.. how can I actually get credit for the participation. Theres no value in supporting the site other than the reputation you have. The reputation should reflect on how helpful you are. The karma you get there is helpful to demonstrate to employers how well you can help others, thats a little difficult to explain how your score just got deflated.