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Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

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11–20 of 203 posts

Re: Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

#11
post #4

I'm somewhere near 7. I find Stack Overflow extremely frustrating to use since I never seem to have enough reputation to do anything. If I remember correctly I can't even comment I gave up trying to contribute and I now only leech. I wish they'd fix it because more than once I had insightful things to say but it wasn't worth the hassle.

You only need 50 reputation to comment anywhere on the site. That's only 5 upvotes on a good answer or 10 upvotes on questions. It's an extremely low bar to get over.

Note: You can always comment on your own posts (questions or answers).

Re: Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

#12
There is a little bit of gaming in SO that makes it hard to compete with others that are more dedicated to the site.

For example, posting a quick answer and then editing it with the answers from others to complete your answer is one I've seen. I don't believe it to be unfair just that it takes effort beyond technical skills to get high rep values in SO. John Skeet aside, he's all technical skills ;p

Re: Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

#14
I participate a lot, but almost exclusively in the (HTML5) Canvas tag. Because I don't answer much else I've got a smallish reputation for a frequent visitor(12K).

I'm the top answer-er for the Canvas tag, having answered around ~10% of all questions ever asked about Canvas on StackOverflow.

I would say that reputation numbers don't necessarily measure engagement per se in S.O. very well.

I've found that if I answer a general JavaScript question, even if its an absurdly simple one, I garner more reputation in a few minutes than if I I give a detailed answer to 2-3 in depth canvas questions.

If I wanted to pad my reputation I could definitely answer more general JS questions that crop up, but I really enjoy helping people with their canvas projects, so I sorta stick to that domain and try to help with my slightly-more-unique knowledge.

Anyway, reputation numbers aren't that important to me. At the end of the day, this is the only encouragement I need:

http://i.imgur.com/POZmt.png

Re: Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

#15
The problem with the SO reputation system is that one-sentence answers to some very basic problem end up earning you > 100 reputation, but a long, well-written answer to a niche question gets you maybe 10 or 20.

I'm not really sure what the solution to this is (it's not dissimilar to the situation here since the comment scores got hidden).

Re: Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

#19
post #13
post #7

My reputation slowed down to a crawl after becoming a moderator.

I rarely post anymore, but I have enough old content in popular tags to gain close to 1k a month through random upvotes (that's about three votes per day).

I get a little 'interest' too, about 300 - 500 monthly.

Re: Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

#20

StackOverflow is one site where I never saw the appeal. I have stumbled upon it a few times through it being a top result during search, but the content seemed fairly flat, for lack of a better term. I suppose if you have a very specific question, it gets the job done. However, in the more traditional forum model, I find the discussion that follows the answer to be far more valuable the answer itself. The StackOverfl…

I have found the signal-to-noise ration to be fairly low every time I look. It's great that there are so many beginners having their questions answered, but I have other things to do with my time.
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