For Advent 2013, I was thinking of starting daily bounties for existing good-but-overlooked answers. But I want to gauge consensus on whether this would be a good or bad idea.

Vague plan: give away 100 rep daily for 25 days (maybe bigger amounts towards the end?). Try to span the range of traditions and not give too much to any one person - ideally nobody would be picked twice. Skew towards currently active users and those who don't already have tons of reputation points.

Pros:

• it would be a nice thing to do
• give a boost to people who could do with a boost
• draw attention to and reward high-quality answers

Personal cons:

• I would lose 2500+ rep (which is fine).
• I would lose the "access to moderator tools" privilege, until I accrued more points.

Nagging doubts:

• Does this distort the "reputation economy"?
• Is it an abuse of power for me to wield my aggregate reputation, as opposed to just upvoting answers I like for 10 points each?
• Am I trusted to be fair in my selection? I don't want to do this if there is any suspicion that I am rewarding a particular ideology, or a social clique.
• Is it disruptive/annoying to have lots of questions being "featured"?
• Would it be better if several people participated in the giveaway, and if there were more process than "I decide who gets what"? There is some attraction for me in doing this unilaterally because then I can just get on with it, but if anyone else wants to be involved then that's fine too. (In many ways, the bias issue is easier with a small unofficial group, because then it's me that gets the blame - any kind of "Official Christianity.SE Answer Awards Project" would be problematic in implying moderatorial endorsement of the recipients.)

If I do this then I will start a meta index post describing each answer and the reason for its selection. Also, chosen answers will have a thematic link to one of the days of Advent (although these may be quite tenuous on some days).

An obvious alternative would be to create such a list, but without the bounties, although I do quite like the idea of giving more substantial rewards.

For Advent 2013, I was thinking of starting daily bounties for existing good-but-overlooked answers. But I want to gauge consensus on whether this would be a good or bad idea.

Vague plan: give away 100 rep daily for 25 days (maybe bigger amounts towards the end?). Try to span the range of traditions and not give too much to any one person - ideally nobody would be picked twice. Skew towards currently active users and those who don't already have tons of reputation points.

Pros:

• it would be a nice thing to do
• give a boost to people who could do with a boost
• draw attention to and reward high-quality answers

Personal cons:

• I would lose 2500+ rep (which is fine).
• I would lose the "access to moderator tools" privilege, until I accrued more points.

Nagging doubts:

• Does this distort the "reputation economy"?
• Is it an abuse of power for me to wield my aggregate reputation, as opposed to just upvoting answers I like for 10 points each?
• Am I trusted to be fair in my selection? I don't want to do this if there is any suspicion that I am rewarding a particular ideology, or a social clique.
• Is it disruptive/annoying to have lots of questions being "featured"?
• Would it be better if several people participated in the giveaway, and if there were more process than "I decide who gets what"? There is some attraction for me in doing this unilaterally because then I can just get on with it, but if anyone else wants to be involved then that's fine too. (In many ways, the bias issue is easier with a small unofficial group, because then it's me that gets the blame - any kind of "Official Christianity.SE Answer Awards Project" would be problematic in implying moderatorial endorsement of the recipients.)

If I do this then I will start a meta index post describing each answer and the reason for its selection. Also, chosen answers will have a thematic link to one of the days of Advent (although these may be quite tenuous on some days).

An obvious alternative would be to create such a list, but without the bounties, although I do quite like the idea of giving more substantial rewards.