http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-r...
There were users who were earning huge swatches of rep by asking hundreds of questions and giving little back in return.
I lost ~1k in rep back when I was >20k, and 1k back then (relatively speaking) was a fair old chunk. It was disappointing at the time but it was the right thing to do.
That decision told me... hey tomorrow they can just decide that all users with name x, y, or has numbers in the name can go bankrupt on reputation.
If anything many of the recent changes have been to make the site more inclusive such as suggested edits, better review processes and so on, so that users who are still on their training wheels on the way to the the 10k and 20k tools can practice "community moderation" under the guidance of more experienced users.
That's the impression I got listening to all the SO podcasts. A quick search found this article, "Stack Overflow Careers: Amplifying Your Awesome" http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/11/stack-overflow-care... and this quote:
'If you're actively participating on Stack
Overflow, we now have another way to convert
those slices of effort into something that
actively furthers your professional goals
Stack Overflow Careers.' Coding Horror.may/maynot & explainable. Would and employer look at a third party like that without looking closer at the candidate? Or are they using the suspect rep numbers as a basis of exclusion?
The global recalc happened arround Feb10. They applied the new policy retroactively. My reaction was ffs.. how can I actually get credit for the participation. Theres no value in supporting the site other than the reputation you have. The reputation should reflect on how helpful you are. The karma you get there is helpful to demonstrate to employers how well you can help others, thats a little difficult to explain how your score just got deflated.