> The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites. By design, I would argue

> The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites. By design, I would argue. And a good decision, too. To use a facetious example just to illustrate my point: without separate reputations, one could build up a huge reputation on http://apple.stackexchange.com/ http://apple.stackexchange.com/ and then use that influence over at http://askubuntu.com/ http://askubuntu.com/ to provide a mediocre answer. This mediocre answer could then get upvoted to the top by those who do not know a better way purely because of this user's reputation. Meanwhile the perfect answer provided by a newcomer to the SE network may remain hidden in second place. N.B. I think the "bonus" reputation points that can be transferred are a way of addressing this imbalance while pushing people to use other SE sites at the same time.