Why is this a big deal? One of the changes is that your reputation on Meta Stack Overflow is now based off your reputation on Stack Overflow, instead of being independent[1]. So now you no longer gain or lose reputation on Meta Stack Overflow for questions and answers you post there, though people can still upvote and downvote your posts.<p>[1]: <a href="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/212631/stack-overflow-is-getting-a-place-of-its-own#comment684467_212631" rel="nofollow">http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/212631/stack-overflo...</a><p>However, the new Meta Stack Exchange maintains its own reputation system, so reputation there still works the same way it did on the old Meta Stack Overflow.