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The main utility of the my reputation (aside from ego ;) seems to be that it can help get questions answered if I add bounty to them. I'd like to do so on deserving questions, but I don't have the time to find & choose them.

A rough idea of what I'd look for: open for a significant period of time, the questioner is still active on the site, and it's a "good question." To me that would mean: it either asks about a specific issue a lot of people experience or one where thorough answers would be a useful learning experience for a broad audience, even if the specific situation is narrow.

Is there some bounty pool I could donate reputation to? I don't mind trusting the discretion of others in the above.

Failing that, maybe there could be a "deserving question" tag or list?

And a third, fallback, option: Link me to some good questions! ;)

(Musing, a bit maybe this could be a new feature idea: "Donated bounty pool" -- a questioner themselves could choose to add some fixed amount of donated bounty to their question themselves after it's received some upvotes & remains unanswered for a period of time.)

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    well, the other use of reputation is to gain privileges on the site, so don't go giving it away too quickly -- gis.stackexchange.com/privileges
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 10:18
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    @Jeff: I know they're called "privileges" but I know what they really are: chores. ;) I certainly don't mind pitching in to curate the community, especially when the opportunities to do so are obvious, but doing so is also a time commitment...
    – Dan S.
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 15:50
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    complaining about chores are ye? is this a mutiny on the bounty? :)
    – Kirk Kuykendall
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 16:55
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    Mutiny? Not so much. I'd just rather reward privileges to others than take the time to exercise them myself. Being realistic about how I spend my (work procrastination) time here, I'm far more likely to get into a chatty discussion buried in the comments than I am to edit a tag cloud.... see? I'm doing it now!
    – Dan S.
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 17:08
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    regardless, I would not go below 150 rep as you'll lose access to some essential functionality..
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Mar 25, 2011 at 0:12
  • This would need to be implemented at the Stack Exchange Network level via the Meta Stack Exchange but if asked there I am sure that it would be heavily downvoted and declined, so I am declining it here to save some angst.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Commented Oct 20, 2017 at 0:47

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Who would select the "deserving questions"?? (I know I'm not qualified!) To find good questions, sort by votes on our main page and look for those without accepted answers (or with no replies at all).

Users with even a little bit of reputation can give it away in 50 point chunks as they wish. There are some creative uses of this. For instance, some sites (e.g., photography) have been awarding bounties to existing great answers in recognition of the effort and expertise that went into creating them.

(Just don't go abusing this mechanism as a way to transfer reputation from one individual to another: that will be detected and would likely cause one or both individuals to lose quite a lot of rep. I doubt anyone on GIS would try that, but such things have occurred on other sites, so the warning is not without foundation...)

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