> Unlike other platforms (HN for example) your reputation on SO still increases over time if you stop engaging or only engage lightly with the community. Given

> Unlike other platforms (HN for example) your reputation on SO still increases over time if you stop engaging or only engage lightly with the community. Given the rules stay the same as they are today I don't think it is possible for any new user to ever surpass any of the high rep early SO users Yeah, something like 80% of my SO karma is from a single evergreen question I asked 10 years ago. You bring up a very interesting community design point: SO's desire to be a curated list of questions makes it increasingly hard to engage with the platform, which may eventually end up killing the community. Knowledgable people may not want to stick around patrolling new questions, if it's rare that they can actually contribute.