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One explanation:

Hit the daily reputation cap on 50 days

Another explanation:

Hit the daily reputation cap 50 times

Which is clearer between the two? Which is more prone to lead to confusion? Does it depend on English background maybe?

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Some context. – RegDwighт♦ Jan 26 '11 at 16:03
2  
Good gravy, people didn't think 'Hit the daily reputation cap on 50 days' could be improved upon? It's godawful! – user3444 Jan 26 '11 at 16:08

3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Hit the daily reputation cap 50 times.

is clearer and more succinct by far, regardless of 'English background'.

As for:

Hit the daily reputation cap on 50 days.

As you've already stated that the reputation is daily, 'days' is redundant. You would instead say something like:

Hit the reputation cap on 50 different days.

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1  
@ElendilTheTall: +1 The redundancy hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out. I guess I've become inured to the imprecision (or perhaps in this case *over*precision) in language that is fostered by the tech community (often by the same folks who would fall all over themselves to refactor someone else's code to remove an unnecessary line). – Robusto Jan 26 '11 at 16:13
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Perhaps they need an English debugger? :) – user3444 Jan 26 '11 at 16:15
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"Hit the daily reputation cap 50 times" looks more beautiful for me. – Tom Brito Jan 26 '11 at 18:28
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“Hit the reputation cap on 50 different days.” has the problem that many readers don’t know yet that the reputation cap is daily, and this will read very differently to them! Strongly agreed however that “Hit the daily rep cap 50 times” is much easier on the ear than the existing wording. – PLL Jan 26 '11 at 18:34
up vote 1 down vote

Hit the daily reputation cap on 50 days

This above statement is not clear at all. 50 consecutive days? 50 days in a year? Any 50 days?

Hit the daily reputation cap 50 times

This is clearer, and there are no possible misunderstandings.

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3  
Actually, I think the second is formally just as ambiguous as the first. The only thing that makes the first pragmatically more ambiguous, in my view, is the fact that the speaker has spelled out the "50 days", which implies that there is some extra meaning to be found there, and so opens up the possibility of their not being 50 consecutive days. – Colin Fine Jan 26 '11 at 16:44
@colin What would a less ambiguous statement be? – Tshepang Jan 26 '11 at 17:08
@Colin: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Interpreted completely literally, the redundancy doesn’t change the meaning. Pragmatically, however, it does. – PLL Jan 26 '11 at 18:38
I think that a degree of ambiguity has been added on purpose, to avoid somebody would do something just to get a new badge. – kiamlaluno Jan 27 '11 at 7:29
up vote 1 down vote

Is it possible that a user could hit the "daily reputation cap" more than once in a single day?

If yes then

Hit the daily reputation cap on 50 days

The above statement implies that there could be more than or equal to 50 times.

While

Hit the daily reputation cap 50 times

The above statement implies that there could be less than or equal to 50 days.

The above two explanations have their own meanings respectively and both are accurate.

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