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It's frustrating as well when the question that was asked gets answered by me, and I receive a slew of down-votes since I answered it first. The next few answe

by kzisme 10y ago

It's frustrating as well when the question that was asked gets answered by me, and I receive a slew of down-votes since I answered it first. The next few answers are essentially copy/paste of my answers or other answers on the question...but I'm still negatively impacted by the down-votes since I only have ~39 rep and wow has getting started been a pain.

Bartweiss 10y ago
A weird observation: starting with SO is particularly punishing if you come to it as an established programmer. The karma restrictions don't chafe much if you're a novice who mostly asks questions, and occasionally answers a simple topic they recognize. If you're experienced, you want to give more complex answers, and perhaps comment on other answers that you think are suboptimal. Doing that, you feel the new users restrictions (and the sting of uninformed downvotes) constantly. 50 karma is big, because the option to comment on other people's posts is core to giving relevant answers ("Did you want it to do X, or Y?") and using the site properly. Honestly, I'd just ask a few questions (if your domain is uncommon enough that they won't be duplicates) and let that karma carry you until the site becomes usable.
- kzisme 10y ago
  Fortunately the only tag I've been following is C# I try not to ask trivial questions (or things that have already been answered) so, providing answers to things I have a decent grasp of is the next best thing. I'm still a fairly new programmer (in the industry), so I'm not claiming to know all of the answers, but if the OP didn't take the time to look themselves - then i'll gladly look for them and answer it. Their question just becomes non-unique and will probably be closed by someone with more reputation than me. Last week I reached I think 52 rep, but the question I answered got closed/deleted so I lost all of that rep.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Huh. Maybe the site has changed in the past 5 years, but when I started - I gave answers on stuff I knew (basic JS, advanced SQL) and asked questions about stuff I didn't know (Obj-C, advanced JS/jQuery, Ruby).
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    This is still viable, but it's gotten a bit trickier because "closed as duplicate" has slowly become a more common outcome. So it's possible to have the stuff you know well be largely covered, and you lose gained karma if the post with your answer gets deleted.

by kzisme 10y ago

Bartweiss 10y ago

A weird observation: starting with SO is particularly punishing if you come to it as an established programmer. The karma restrictions don't chafe much if you're a novice who mostly asks questions, and occasionally answers a simple topic they recognize. If you're experienced, you want to give more complex answers, and perhaps comment on other answers that you think are suboptimal. Doing that, you feel the new users restrictions (and the sting of uninformed downvotes) constantly. 50 karma is big, because the option to comment on other people's posts is core to giving relevant answers ("Did you want it to do X, or Y?") and using the site properly. Honestly, I'd just ask a few questions (if your domain is uncommon enough that they won't be duplicates) and let that karma carry you until the site becomes usable.

kzisme 10y ago
Fortunately the only tag I've been following is C# I try not to ask trivial questions (or things that have already been answered) so, providing answers to things I have a decent grasp of is the next best thing. I'm still a fairly new programmer (in the industry), so I'm not claiming to know all of the answers, but if the OP didn't take the time to look themselves - then i'll gladly look for them and answer it. Their question just becomes non-unique and will probably be closed by someone with more reputation than me. Last week I reached I think 52 rep, but the question I answered got closed/deleted so I lost all of that rep.
r00fus 10y ago
Huh. Maybe the site has changed in the past 5 years, but when I started - I gave answers on stuff I knew (basic JS, advanced SQL) and asked questions about stuff I didn't know (Obj-C, advanced JS/jQuery, Ruby).
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  This is still viable, but it's gotten a bit trickier because "closed as duplicate" has slowly become a more common outcome. So it's possible to have the stuff you know well be largely covered, and you lose gained karma if the post with your answer gets deleted.