Short Version
Get rid of cancellation of rep gain or rep loss based on question (not answer) up/down votes made after a question is marked Community Wiki.

Long Version
When a question is marked Community Wiki, no more reputation is gained on either the question or the answer. This is a side effect, not the purpose, of Community Wiki.

I can see a rationale for no additional reputation for Community Wiki answers. Maybe the fastest gun started the nucleus of a good Community Wiki answer, but was only responsible for 10% of it, and shouldn't get 100% of the reputation. Answers can be designed by committee because they're made up of facts, and we should be able to agree on facts.

However, I'm not so sure of the rationale for no additional reputation for Community Wiki questions nowadays. I don't think that questions can be designed by committee. The FAQ says questions are "based on actual problems that you face", and you're the one who has the problem. Other people can help phrase your question better, or they can answer it, but they can't ask it for you.

If Community Wiki doesn't make your question higher quality than it would be under non-CW mode, then you've "earned" your question upvote reputation as much as usual, right?

I could be mistaken though. Maybe there's data that marking a question as Community Wiki increases the amount of editing by low-rep users, even if they could suggest edits otherwise. Or that it encourages people who could, but choose not to, edit a question to do so, or edit it more thoroughly.

Just in case someone argues "But what about 'favorite cartoon' questions? Why should someone get reputation for that?", I interpret Grace Note as saying that Community Wiki is no longer (if it was ever) the correct hammer to deal with such questions.

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this is a lot of text without a clear "this is what I want/recommend" sentence in it that I can find or parse out. Can you add one? –  Jeff Atwood Sep 26 '11 at 9:28
CW used to be the last line of defense against bike sheds. –  user7116 Sep 26 '11 at 16:47
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1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Reading the Grace Note's blog post, I get the CW questions should be used very rarely, or not used at all; in this case, I think that not gaining reputation from those questions is rarely a problem.
If then the reputation gain would apply to old CW questions, which were made CW when that had a different meaning (which mean that nowadays those questions would be closed), then I think that is another reason for not changing how CW questions are handled.

Looking at Meta Stack Overflow, I notice that Jeff Atwood uses CW questions when he is asking an opinion for something that is going to be implemented; in this case, every answer is equally valid, and making them CW answers (which is automatic when the question is a CW) makes sense. I think that Jeff Atwood makes them CW exactly to avoid users get reputation for those answers. Also the questions tagged are CW questions. It makes sense that answers for those questions don't give reputation to who answers. In both the cases, it makes sense that who asks the question doesn't get reputation either.

Since there is still the need of questions where the OP or the answerers don't get any reputation, if CW questions give reputation, there should be the need of introducing a new flag that don't allow the OP or the answerers to get reputation. All the old CW questions should then be changed to use that flag.
I think that keeping CW questions as they are is easier.

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Here on Meta, it makes sense that also the faq questions don't give rep. –  Hendrik Vogt Sep 26 '11 at 15:33
That is correct. The focus of this question is then the reputation given to who asks a question that is changed to CW. –  kiamlaluno Sep 26 '11 at 15:46
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