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Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

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

#51

Post by Piskvorrr »

lifebeyondfife wrote: post #43

Does anyone have the same problem with SO that I do? I'm an experienced dev in some general / mature technologies, mainly the C-like languages (I know C# inside out) but essentially, nothing too specialised. Anytime I've gone on SO to try to contribute I find it hard to find questions to answer. It's either a race to answer a trivial question quickly, or an obscure - possibly badly worded or incomplete - question tha…

It's just a phase. Note that your answer doesn't need to be the first, or the only one (quick answers get more votes initially; good answers tend to get the most votes, eventually). For that matter, it's not even necessary to answer just the newest questions - I've received (and given) answers months after posting the question, and bubbled to the top amongst the older answers.

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

#52

Post by Xion »

lifebeyondfife wrote: post #43

Does anyone have the same problem with SO that I do? I'm an experienced dev in some general / mature technologies, mainly the C-like languages (I know C# inside out) but essentially, nothing too specialised. Anytime I've gone on SO to try to contribute I find it hard to find questions to answer. It's either a race to answer a trivial question quickly, or an obscure - possibly badly worded or incomplete - question tha…

I absolutely have the same problem, and you do not really have to be an expert to encouter this.

Personally I do not find much appeal in taking part in this "race" you have mentioned - even if the opportunity cost is a big fat number of upvotes. On the other hand, I often don't feel like cooking up an elaborate answer in relatively obscure topic only to receive few upvotes. Both cases seem to demonstrate a downside of SO's reputation system, for it might rather easily become a purpose in itself, sucking up the pleasure of sharing knowledge with others.

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

#53

Post by JeremyBanks »

pmjordan wrote: post #39
cruise02 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation points in niche tags are definitely harder won than in the popular language tags, but (as you've demonstrated) it's easier to climb to the top of a niche tag and establish yourself as an expert. The real-world reputation you gain from that is more valuable than the reputation score on the site. Great job!

The high-traffic tags are full of low-quality or frequently asked questions. The amount of duplication in e.g. the C++ tag is staggering, but there doesn't seem to be a conscious effort to enforce a no-duplicate policy of any kind. Picking out worthwhile questions is difficult with all that noise. Worse, the "unanswered" section is full of questions that have been answered, the asker just never bothered to click acce…

Regarding duplicates: they should be closed as duplicates of a canonical question, but the incentives all work against that so it rarely happens.

There's a ten-month-old widely-supported proposal on meta meant to address this, but it hasn't received any comment from the Stack Exchange Inc. folks. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/90620/134300

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

#54

Post by GlennS »

simonsarris wrote: post #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…

I'm somewhat lower on the scale than yourself, but I've found that my highest rated answer is my most trivial: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/287404/using-regular-expr...

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

#55

Post by dpark »

darrenkopp wrote: post #41

I was very active during the beta and launch, and was in the top 3 pages by rep for a while, but I became less active just because I didn't have much time. I still go on almost every day, but i just look at the featured questions on front page and maybe will answer one if it's something I know, but usually don't. Most of my reputation points come from residual answers.

Ditto, although I cut back my participation mostly because SO turned into a frustrating experience.

It's not rewarding to type out a good answer only to be beaten by a bunch of half-assed answers that appeared first. Nor is it rewarding to type out a detailed answer only to have someone come along 5 minutes later post basically the same thing (including stealing the code example) and get chosen as the selected answer. Add to that the deletionist moderation ("Oh, this post from 2008 should have been on SuperUser instead so we'll just delete it") and a number of other issues. At this point, I generally find participation in SO significantly more frustrating than rewarding.

I still get about +30 rep per day, but almost all of that is from two answers that date to the very early days of SO.

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

#56

Post by jxf »

I'm one of the top-rated users on StackOverflow. While I feel like my answers are high quality, I also feel like I didn't work very hard to get there.

There are days where I never log onto StackOverflow but nevertheless earn 100+ points per day. For example, a few weeks back I answered an obscure question about an unusual expression in the Linux kernel.

Someone posted it on HN and it blew up. I continue to earn "interest" on that original answer, even though I've contributed nothing of substance to it since then. (IMO, it should become harder for people to earn reputation from answers they've already given over time.)

Ultimately, I view the reputation count as something of a quasi-meaningless metric that's nevertheless a good resume booster. I like answering questions and helping people, and that's the main reason I use SO.

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

#57

Post by why-el »

A general remark that I always had and wanted to share is how easy it was to boost your reputation in the early days of SO. For instance, questions like "Best practices" for something, or what is a git stash, etc..Some questions are rather very simple and wont get you that much these days, but because somebody was the first to ask them, they got lots of points. My point is, it should have been harder to get points for asking relatively simple questions, and then gradually make it easier for people to get more points for asking questions as they dont have a choice but ask a more challenging question, thus contributing more to SO. PS: I wanted to link to some questions but they are in abundance. just think of a simple question and watch the spectacle of points.

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

#58

Post by why-el »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #51
lifebeyondfife wrote: post #43

Does anyone have the same problem with SO that I do? I'm an experienced dev in some general / mature technologies, mainly the C-like languages (I know C# inside out) but essentially, nothing too specialised. Anytime I've gone on SO to try to contribute I find it hard to find questions to answer. It's either a race to answer a trivial question quickly, or an obscure - possibly badly worded or incomplete - question tha…

It's just a phase. Note that your answer doesn't need to be the first, or the only one (quick answers get more votes initially; good answers tend to get the most votes, eventually). For that matter, it's not even necessary to answer just the newest questions - I've received (and given) answers months after posting the question, and bubbled to the top amongst the older answers.

Great point. I just upvoted an answer to a git question I had and it dated back to 2009.

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

#59

Post by huhtenberg »

I find participating in SO extremely annoying. Tried few times and gave up.

I can't downvote an answer that is patently absurd. I can't upvote an answer that is right. Apparently that's because I have to prove myself first. If I write a response (that damn sure answers the question), it sits at zero, because its usefulness appears to be directly dependent on my reputation, of which I have none.

In general, there's just too much reputation whoring going on. Just flipped through the list of opened questions, and I can easily answer 80% of those without thinking. But I won't, because I don't like how SO is treating me. Should they hide all scores similarly to how pg did here, I think it would make the site much more attractive for participation for people like myself.

Feel free to disagree (preferably by answering and not downvoting).

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