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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?

#71

Post by chc »

huhtenberg wrote: post #59

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 ju…

There is a small advantage to having a high rep score, but I haven't noticed it being that big a handicap. Usually the difference is that people with low rep scores just haven't learned how to write a good answer. But given equal quality answers, I haven't noticed that low-rep people are at all that much of a disadvantage. Obviously I can't say for sure, but I really have to believe that either a) you're giving answers on topics that have built up a bad SO community around them, or b) your answers are lacking in some area other than factual correctness.

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

#73

Post by pohl »

pkamb wrote: post #31
cruise02 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It's extremely frustrating when you want to comment on a different Stack Exchange site but can't due to having no reputation... despite the fact that the new account you made is 'linked' to one on Stack Overflow with thousands of rep.

I only have 477 points on SO, yet when I sign up for other stack exchange sites I immediately get 100 free points. The bar really isn't that high. It's just designed to force newbies into those specific activities that one ought focus on first: providing good answers to questions, and asking good questions.

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

#75

Post by sbierwagen »

26 rep there, 2016 karma here.

Scrolling through the thread I see a lot of people saying exactly what I was going to say about the difficulty of participation, (Can't upvote, downvote, or comment at low levels of karma) and the lack of questions that can be answered; so I won't rehash them.

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

#76

Post by cruise02 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #59

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 ju…

> 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.

Yeah, that's kind of the idea. Why would anyone trust you until you've proven yourself? Do you just want privileges handed to you?

> 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.

Who in the hell is going to look at your reputation score before voting on your answer? You only have to help one person (the one asking the question) to get an upvote. Trust me, no one cares what your reputation score is.

> 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.

That pretty much tells me everything I need to know about you. If your comments here are any indication of the kind of contribution you can make, then thank you for not bringing your bullshit to Stack Overflow.

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

#77

Post by aangjie »

huhtenberg wrote: post #59

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 ju…

I don't know what effect hiding votes would have on SO, but suspect it will be an interesting experiment nevertheless. I have indeed faced some of the newbie problems, though my complaints usually are around the comment everywhere, and editing other answers privilege. There are lots of answers, i see i can improve by asking a explanatory question? I understand why editing others' answer has that requirement the the comment everywhere seems too much to me.

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

#78

Post by AlexC04 »

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 remember the time you helped me with some canvas stuff. Thanks again. 12K is well deserved :)

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

#79

Post by pm24601 »

SO I find reasonably useful - but answering questions on SO rather than getting shit done is a waste of time.

Echoing a lot of the other comments, it is easy to get a high rep by just going for the beginner questions. The easiest way to get "reputation" is by answering an opinion question or asking an opinion question. Once I realized that, I ignored reputation mine or anyone elses.

Any complex question I answer on my blog. I then answer the question on SO with a medium length excerpt pointing to my blog. I want to own my content from google's perspective and I rather get google pagerank than SO's reputation.

Oh yeah, I should add that the best SE (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should...) answer I gave in terms of upvotes made it to HN.

It was an opinion question.

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

#80

Post by peeters »

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'm in the 25k-50k bracket, and I can definitely say that a GOOD chunk of that rep came from happening to be the first to answer a trivial question. The reasoning is that other editors also jump on it, see that you've already answered it, and upvote you instead of answering themselves.

But that's why I don't use reputation as a measure of my experience on StackOverflow. It's all about the great answers that you put a lot of time into researching and that you know will stand as a resource for future visitors. And by the way: these kinds of answers give you a lot more money for jam (http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/8116/my-mo...) than the quick ones that never again get visited after an hour.

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