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I was just wondering why a user's reputation and badges aren't shown when a question becomes a community wiki. Is it for space-saving? Or is there another reason?

I understand that wiki's do not contribute to a user's reputation. However, I find a user's reputation useful when reading questions and especially answers. This does not change for me when reading a community wiki.

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    By design: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8767/…
    – blah238
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 2:26
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    I figured it was by design. I still think it's useful to know a user's reputation despite the fact that wikis don't contribute.
    – Fezter
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 3:37

1 Answer 1

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Not sure if there is an official/correct answer for this question, but here are some arguments that might help explaining it:

  1. The fact in which Community Wiki (CW) content usually is opinion-based makes reputation not so relevant under a "validity" point of view. For example: What makes a map beautiful? is very subjective and visual. No reputation is required to help deciding on which question to vote. I agree some occasions where the CW status is kind of borderline (between opinions and true answers) it would be helpful to follow the lead of more experienced users. For example: What's the difference between a projection and a datum?

  2. I think another argument to omit reputation is to emphasize Community Wiki questions and answers do not provide reputation.
    There are lots of duplicate questions on SE main meta site from users asking why they did not earn reputation on CW threads (I think these questions would be even more frequent if reputation was displayed normally).

Update

I found the below thread in MSO (published in 24th, July, 2009). It seems the above bullets (#1 and #2) are in agreement with Eric's answer.

Why is user reputation hidden on Community Wiki questions?

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