When I first started trying to post and vote, I had the same experience: why is this web site trying to prevent me from using it? Ohh. They're trying to gamify

When I first started trying to post and vote, I had the same experience: why is this web site trying to prevent me from using it? Ohh. They're trying to gamify answering programming questions. Ain't nobody got time for that. But then a year or so later I logged in and somehow I had cleared all of the caps without having really done anything. I guess some comments or voted on some things and some stuff got voted up. Regardless all of the sudden I could just do whatever I wanted. Doesn't seem like the incentives are set up right, at least anecdotally in this case. The reward I received was not connected to any sort of earnest attempts at helping the site out. Those were rebuffed. And now I guess I can contribute, but I spent a good while thinking of Stack Overflow as a read-only site that I'm not really in the habit of thinking that way.