I have some amount of rep on StackOverflow. It gives me some modicum of credibility as a seasoned StackOverflow user as well as a subject matter above-averager in the tags that I frequent.

However, sometimes I may come across someone who just oozes knowledge and looking through their profiles (off-site) it is clear these are very reputable people.

My question is, what level of rep shedding/transfer is considered appropriate? My goal, should I undertake the action and were it considered appropriate, is to level-up such a character so that they may better participate on the site being able to vote, edit etc.

Would slapping 4x 500rep bounties over 8 days be considered excessive and/or abusive?

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    Rep in SO means community trust, employers who'd value rep instead of reading a users' answers to assess the skill of an individual are silly. I can rep all day and gain 300+ rep easily answering silly regex and jQuery answers - would that make me a good developer? No - that would indicate I know how to resolve users' issues fast though and would gain me community trust. Employers who take rep in SO as a measure of competence are definitely doing something wrong. – Benjamin Gruenbaum Jul 12 '13 at 18:30

To be honest, I don't think anyone would notice.

Keep in mind, though, that "power-leveling" someone isn't necessarily doing them a favour. There's a lot to be gained by learning how the community works and unlocking privileges over time instead of having someone fasttrack you along.

My advice is to treat this as voting: your focus should be on the post, not the user. The key point being that even a super-smart, knowledgeable person can write a subpar answer. You may be going into this with the best intentions, but when you start following specific users to shower them in reputation... well, it's easy to forget the spirit of the "law" there.

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    Someone might notice... – ben is uǝq backwards Nov 16 '12 at 8:07
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    2000 rep in a few days is very visible on the weekly view of the Users screen, particularly at the start of the week. (On Monday morning, it's rare for many people to have over 300. Having over 1000 would stick out like a sore thumb.) – Jon Skeet Nov 16 '12 at 14:28
  • @JonSkeet That's a good point. I didn't think anyone pays attention to that page, but clearly at least a couple people do. :) – Adam Lear Nov 16 '12 at 15:37
  • @Jon Good to know you're still frequenting that page after 4 years... – RichardTheKiwi Nov 17 '12 at 23:57

Instead of quickly shooting one large amount of rep, I would rather split it into a sequence of smaller size bounties (50-100-200) and keep each of them hanging for a week (ie as long as possible).

I did something like that at Workplace and Programmers. Unfortunately, the system doesn't add bounty remarks to a question's revision history so you just have to take my word that I did my best to refer bounty message readers to target answer and explain what I like about it.

You see, my idea was to let great answers collect more eyeballs, along with hopefully some more upvotes from readers. For that, preferable strategy seems to make it hang in as long as possible, hence longer hanging sequence of smaller bounties instead of quick and large one.

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