#Question Forgiveness ###(or, Help a Question that was Downvoted Into Oblivion)

On occasion, there are questions that exist which may not have been well-worded when they were first asked, and attracted a ton of downvotes.

Someone may come along later and edit it into shape - be it the OP or some kind soul - but the question is still stuck at a myriad of downvotes. In that state, regardless of whether or not it makes its way through the review queues, the question is still branded as being "bad" because it happened to catch a ton of negative hype when it first came up.

While this is a rare thing to see - a question downvoted so heavily but still has a chance - it would be a shame to lose questions that have suffered from either the Meta effect or happened to catch users at a peak time who would disagree with it.

To that, I propose the Question Forgiveness micro-privilege.

Motivation:

Encourage community-driven investments on questions which are objectively good that may have fallen out of favor of the mob at a given time.

In a nutshell:

You use your reputation to pay against the reputation of a heavily downvoted question. The question then can rise above the filter thresholds and give it a chance to be seen/voted on once more.

In finer detail:

• This is only usable against questions that have a score of -10 or lower.
• You would pay 50 + 2 reputation per point to balance out the negative votes on the existing question, with a minimum of 50 reputation spent at a score of -10. (Example: A question scored -17 would cost you 64 reputation to revive, due to the 50 minimum and 14 extra rep, 2 for each point below 10.) The question would not receive any upvotes, nor would the OP receive any reputation in the process.
• The question would be made more prominent for a period of time (72 hours).
• Voting on the question (negative voting) would not be visible to others; only the people that downvoted would be able to see their downvote on the question. For users with the ability to see vote score, they would either get the true upvote total, or the total comparing the forgiveness score with the original score. They would also be able to see that this question is being forgiven, and that it should be revisited based on the merits of the question alone.
• At the end of the forgiveness period, the actual score is restored to the question.

The core of the suggestion is above, but here are two controversial additions to it:

• After the trial period, if the new question score balances out the negative score, then the 50+ reputation investment is refunded. Otherwise, the reputation is lost. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it; and there are 11 upvotes on the question. Whomever offered it forgiveness would have their 52 reputation refunded.)
• After the trial period, if the new question score results in more downvotes than upvotes, then the investor would lose reputation (up to 10) proportional to the net total score. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it, and there are 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. Since that's a net score of -7, the investor would lose 7 reputation.

Question Forgiveness

(or, Help a Question that was Downvoted Into Oblivion)

On occasion, there are questions that exist which may not have been well-worded when they were first asked, and attracted a ton of downvotes.

Someone may come along later and edit it into shape - be it the OP or some kind soul - but the question is still stuck at a myriad of downvotes. In that state, regardless of whether or not it makes its way through the review queues, the question is still branded as being "bad" because it happened to catch a ton of negative hype when it first came up.

While this is a rare thing to see - a question downvoted so heavily but still has a chance - it would be a shame to lose questions that have suffered from either the Meta effect or happened to catch users at a peak time who would disagree with it.

To that, I propose the Question Forgiveness micro-privilege.

Motivation:

Encourage community-driven investments on questions which are objectively good that may have fallen out of favor of the mob at a given time.

In a nutshell:

You use your reputation to pay against the reputation of a heavily downvoted question. The question then can rise above the filter thresholds and give it a chance to be seen/voted on once more.

In finer detail:

• This is only usable against questions that have a score of -10 or lower.
• You would pay 50 + 2 reputation per point to balance out the negative votes on the existing question, with a minimum of 50 reputation spent at a score of -10. (Example: A question scored -17 would cost you 64 reputation to revive, due to the 50 minimum and 14 extra rep, 2 for each point below 10.) The question would not receive any upvotes, nor would the OP receive any reputation in the process.
• The question would be made more prominent for a period of time (72 hours).
• Voting on the question (negative voting) would not be visible to others; only the people that downvoted would be able to see their downvote on the question. For users with the ability to see vote score, they would either get the true upvote total, or the total comparing the forgiveness score with the original score. They would also be able to see that this question is being forgiven, and that it should be revisited based on the merits of the question alone.
• At the end of the forgiveness period, the actual score is restored to the question.

The core of the suggestion is above, but here are two controversial additions to it:

• After the trial period, if the new question score balances out the negative score, then the 50+ reputation investment is refunded. Otherwise, the reputation is lost. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it; and there are 11 upvotes on the question. Whomever offered it forgiveness would have their 52 reputation refunded.)
• After the trial period, if the new question score results in more downvotes than upvotes, then the investor would lose reputation (up to 10) proportional to the net total score. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it, and there are 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. Since that's a net score of -7, the investor would lose 7 reputation.

#Question Forgiveness ###(or, Help a Question that was Downvoted Into Oblivion)

On occasion, there are questions that exist which may not have been well-worded when they were first asked, and attracted a ton of downvotes.

Someone may come along later and edit it into shape - be it the OP or some kind soul - but the question is still stuck at a myriad of downvotes. In that state, regardless of whether or not it makes its way through the review queues, the question is still branded as being "bad" because it happened to catch a ton of negative hype when it first came up.

While this is a rare thing to see - a question downvoted so heavily but still has a chance - it would be a shame to lose questions that have suffered from either the Meta effect or happened to catch users at a peak time who would disagree with it.

To that, I propose the Question Forgiveness micro-privilege.

Motivation:

Encourage community-driven investments on questions which are objectively good that may have fallen out of favor of the mob at a given time.

In a nutshell:

You use your reputation to pay against the reputation of a heavily downvoted question. The question then can rise above the filter thresholds and give it a chance to be seen/voted on once more.

In finer detail:

• This is only usable against questions that have a score of -10 or lower.
• You would pay 50 + 2 reputation to balance out the negative votes on the existing question, with a minimum of 50 reputation spent at a score of -10. (Example: A question scored -17 would cost you 64 reputation to revive, due to the 50 minimum and 14 extra rep for each point below 10.) The question would not receive any upvotes, nor would the OP receive any reputation in the process.
• The question would be made more prominent for a period of time (72 hours).
• Voting on the question (negative voting) would not be visible to others; only the people that downvoted would be able to see their downvote on the question. For users with the ability to see vote score, they would either get the true upvote total, or the total comparing the forgiveness score with the original score. They would also be able to see that this question is being forgiven, and that it should be revisited based on the merits of the question alone.
• At the end of the forgiveness period, the actual score is restored to the question.

The core of the suggestion is above, but here are two controversial additions to it:

• After the trial period, if the new question score balances out the negative score, then the 50 reputation investment is refunded. Otherwise, the reputation is lost. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it; and there are 11 upvotes on the question. Whomever offered it forgiveness would have their 50 reputation refunded.)
• After the trial period, if the new question score results in more downvotes than upvotes, then the investor would lose reputation (up to 10) proportional to the net total score. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it, and there are 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. Since that's a net score of -7, the investor would lose 7 reputation.

#Question Forgiveness ###(or, Help a Question that was Downvoted Into Oblivion)

On occasion, there are questions that exist which may not have been well-worded when they were first asked, and attracted a ton of downvotes.

Someone may come along later and edit it into shape - be it the OP or some kind soul - but the question is still stuck at a myriad of downvotes. In that state, regardless of whether or not it makes its way through the review queues, the question is still branded as being "bad" because it happened to catch a ton of negative hype when it first came up.

While this is a rare thing to see - a question downvoted so heavily but still has a chance - it would be a shame to lose questions that have suffered from either the Meta effect or happened to catch users at a peak time who would disagree with it.

To that, I propose the Question Forgiveness micro-privilege.

Motivation:

Encourage community-driven investments on questions which are objectively good that may have fallen out of favor of the mob at a given time.

In a nutshell:

You use your reputation to pay against the reputation of a heavily downvoted question. The question then can rise above the filter thresholds and give it a chance to be seen/voted on once more.

In finer detail:

• This is only usable against questions that have a score of -10 or lower.
• You would pay 50 + 2 reputation per point to balance out the negative votes on the existing question, with a minimum of 50 reputation spent at a score of -10. (Example: A question scored -17 would cost you 64 reputation to revive, due to the 50 minimum and 14 extra rep, 2 for each point below 10.) The question would not receive any upvotes, nor would the OP receive any reputation in the process.
• The question would be made more prominent for a period of time (72 hours).
• Voting on the question (negative voting) would not be visible to others; only the people that downvoted would be able to see their downvote on the question. For users with the ability to see vote score, they would either get the true upvote total, or the total comparing the forgiveness score with the original score. They would also be able to see that this question is being forgiven, and that it should be revisited based on the merits of the question alone.
• At the end of the forgiveness period, the actual score is restored to the question.

The core of the suggestion is above, but here are two controversial additions to it:

• After the trial period, if the new question score balances out the negative score, then the 50+ reputation investment is refunded. Otherwise, the reputation is lost. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it; and there are 11 upvotes on the question. Whomever offered it forgiveness would have their 52 reputation refunded.)
• After the trial period, if the new question score results in more downvotes than upvotes, then the investor would lose reputation (up to 10) proportional to the net total score. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it, and there are 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. Since that's a net score of -7, the investor would lose 7 reputation.

#Question Forgiveness ###(or, Help a Question that was Downvoted Into Oblivion)

On occasion, there are questions that exist which may not have been well-worded when they were first asked, and attracted a ton of downvotes.

Someone may come along later and edit it into shape - be it the OP or some kind soul - but the question is still stuck at a myriad of downvotes. In that state, regardless of whether or not it makes its way through the review queues, the question is still branded as being "bad" because it happened to catch a ton of negative hype when it first came up.

While this is a rare thing to see - a question downvoted so heavily but still has a chance - it would be a shame to lose questions that have suffered from either the Meta effect or happened to catch users at a peak time who would disagree with it.

To that, I propose the Question Forgiveness micro-privilege.

Motivation:

Encourage community-driven investments on questions which are objectively good that may have fallen out of favor of the mob at a given time.

In a nutshell:

You use your reputation to pay against the reputation of a heavily downvoted question. The question then can rise above the filter thresholds and give it a chance to be seen/voted on once more.

In finer detail:

• This is only usable against questions that have a score of -10 or lower.
• You would pay 50 reputation to balance out the negative votes on the existing question. The question would not receive any upvotes, nor would the OP receive any reputation in the process.
• The question would be made more prominent for a period of time (72 hours).
• Voting on the question (negative voting) would not be visible to others; only the people that downvoted would be able to see their downvote on the question. For users with the ability to see vote score, they would either get the true upvote total, or the total comparing the forgiveness score with the original score. They would also be able to see that this question is being forgiven, and that it should be revisited based on the merits of the question alone.
• At the end of the forgiveness period, the actual score is restored to the question.

The core of the suggestion is above, but here are two controversial additions to it:

• After the trial period, if the new question score balances out the negative score, then the 50 reputation investment is refunded. Otherwise, the reputation is lost. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it; and there are 11 upvotes on the question. Whomever offered it forgiveness would have their 50 reputation refunded.)
• After the trial period, if the new question score results in more downvotes than upvotes, then the investor would lose reputation (up to 10) proportional to the net total score. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it, and there are 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. Since that's a net score of -7, the investor would lose 7 reputation.

#Question Forgiveness ###(or, Help a Question that was Downvoted Into Oblivion)

On occasion, there are questions that exist which may not have been well-worded when they were first asked, and attracted a ton of downvotes.

Someone may come along later and edit it into shape - be it the OP or some kind soul - but the question is still stuck at a myriad of downvotes. In that state, regardless of whether or not it makes its way through the review queues, the question is still branded as being "bad" because it happened to catch a ton of negative hype when it first came up.

While this is a rare thing to see - a question downvoted so heavily but still has a chance - it would be a shame to lose questions that have suffered from either the Meta effect or happened to catch users at a peak time who would disagree with it.

To that, I propose the Question Forgiveness micro-privilege.

Motivation:

Encourage community-driven investments on questions which are objectively good that may have fallen out of favor of the mob at a given time.

In a nutshell:

You use your reputation to pay against the reputation of a heavily downvoted question. The question then can rise above the filter thresholds and give it a chance to be seen/voted on once more.

In finer detail:

• This is only usable against questions that have a score of -10 or lower.
• You would pay 50 + 2 reputation to balance out the negative votes on the existing question, with a minimum of 50 reputation spent at a score of -10. (Example: A question scored -17 would cost you 64 reputation to revive, due to the 50 minimum and 14 extra rep for each point below 10.) The question would not receive any upvotes, nor would the OP receive any reputation in the process.
• The question would be made more prominent for a period of time (72 hours).
• Voting on the question (negative voting) would not be visible to others; only the people that downvoted would be able to see their downvote on the question. For users with the ability to see vote score, they would either get the true upvote total, or the total comparing the forgiveness score with the original score. They would also be able to see that this question is being forgiven, and that it should be revisited based on the merits of the question alone.
• At the end of the forgiveness period, the actual score is restored to the question.

The core of the suggestion is above, but here are two controversial additions to it:

• After the trial period, if the new question score balances out the negative score, then the 50 reputation investment is refunded. Otherwise, the reputation is lost. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it; and there are 11 upvotes on the question. Whomever offered it forgiveness would have their 50 reputation refunded.)
• After the trial period, if the new question score results in more downvotes than upvotes, then the investor would lose reputation (up to 10) proportional to the net total score. (Example: A question with -11 score has this applied to it, and there are 3 upvotes and 10 downvotes. Since that's a net score of -7, the investor would lose 7 reputation.