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I have given up on participating on SO because more often than not I am told I don't have enough reputation to do something (I don't know if it's commenting or

I have given up on participating on SO because more often than not I am told I don't have enough reputation to do something (I don't know if it's commenting or giving an answer or giving an upvote but there are some questions for which answers are wrong or need some updates and I can't participate. So I just don't by default. I think I can't upvote on some stack and I find this weird).

nickysielicki 5y ago
I'm with you. I've never had an active account on StackOverflow. I created an account once or twice after coming across a question where the "accepted" answer was incorrect, or where it was badly missing something about the big-picture, and I was appalled to find that they don't let new accounts answer questions -- you have to comment or upvote (or something?) before you gain the right to answer a question. Fuck that. I'm not going to waste my time farming karma for the privilege of answer questions for complete strangers that I happen to know the answer to. The moderation on stackoverflow is a complete mess -- it reminds me of the powertripping that you see on Wikipedia, but maybe even worse because there's far less room for interpretation when most of the questions are technical in nature.
- lloda 5y ago
  This has been my exact experience. So to me it's always been a read only site.
  - LilBytes 5y ago
    Adding my voice to the quorum, same here.
bhandziuk 5y ago
The threshold is very low. https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges You need 15 points to up vote which means you need to have received 2 up-votes yourself on either a question or answer or have edited 7 questions/answers and had those approved. It's quite easy to hit those numbers. Once you have 1000 points (I think) on any site and you join a new site you get 100 points by default which means you always have those base privileges wherever you are.
- narag 5y ago
  The threshold is very low. Well, not low enough for me. After a few attempts to answer some questions early on, I gave up. Read only for me. I don't even remember what the problem was. Why making contributing difficult and consuming easy? I guess it worked for them. Counterintuitive, but nice jackpot.
  - bhandziuk 5y ago
    As far as I can remember it's always been this way: very low barrier to entry. All you have to do is make an account to ask and answer questions. I don't know why you had a hard time posting. Maybe you're thinking of commenting? The counter is ExpertsExchange: very difficult to do both.
    - narag 5y ago
      No idea, but I was just trying to answer some questions. I remember vaguely that I needed some points to help and I needed to help to get the points, so... I shrugged and let it be.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        If a question is very popular, a lot of people think it's like a normal forum and post “me too” answers. (Or, at least, they used to, before everyone knew Stack Overflow.) So there's a mechanism to “protect” questions so you need at least 10 rep (on that site – the “you contributed lots on another site so probably aren't a spammer” bonus doesn't count) before you can answer. Very few questions are protected.
    - MrFantastic 5y ago
      The first post on SO for most accounts tend to be from Newbs. The people see the question and think Read The Fucking Manual and downvote. Then you have zero karma and you can't do anything else. The problem is that the Newb doesn't even know where to start in the manual.
  - 5y ago
philote 5y ago
I can't downvote your comment here on HN, presumably because I don't have enough reputation. And HN doesn't even tell me.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  I think you need 100 points in order to downvote. HN generally prefers to upvote good content rather than to downvote bad content.
  - detaro 5y ago
    you need >500 points
    - warrenm 5y ago
      I've got close to 600 ... yet only see the downvote option on very new posts
- r00fus 5y ago
  It's a mitigation to the "bury brigade" problem digg used to have. I think a relatively low hurdle is a good balance.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  You can comment without any problem. Downvoting is not the main usage of HN, like answering questions is on SO (or commenting, it's a wonder that they still allow any kind of activity for people without karma, too bad the only allowed activity is making questions, that will be incorrectly marked and downvoted most of the time).
ljm 5y ago
For me, I just don't use it often enough to log back in. It's largely been supplanted by browsing issue trackers and reading the source. At the same time, google search results are massively less useful now and if I don't get a hit, I'm going to reach out to the source. To that extent, I think SO has the same problem as Google - it will regress to the mean. This is also because google search results will be flooded with SO mirrors that rerender content but with more ads.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  I like logging in and bookmark answers I might need later.

nickysielicki 5y ago

I'm with you. I've never had an active account on StackOverflow. I created an account once or twice after coming across a question where the "accepted" answer was incorrect, or where it was badly missing something about the big-picture, and I was appalled to find that they don't let new accounts answer questions -- you have to comment or upvote (or something?) before you gain the right to answer a question. Fuck that. I'm not going to waste my time farming karma for the privilege of answer questions for complete strangers that I happen to know the answer to. The moderation on stackoverflow is a complete mess -- it reminds me of the powertripping that you see on Wikipedia, but maybe even worse because there's far less room for interpretation when most of the questions are technical in nature.

lloda 5y ago
This has been my exact experience. So to me it's always been a read only site.
- LilBytes 5y ago
  Adding my voice to the quorum, same here.

bhandziuk 5y ago

The threshold is very low. https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges You need 15 points to up vote which means you need to have received 2 up-votes yourself on either a question or answer or have edited 7 questions/answers and had those approved. It's quite easy to hit those numbers. Once you have 1000 points (I think) on any site and you join a new site you get 100 points by default which means you always have those base privileges wherever you are.

narag 5y ago
The threshold is very low. Well, not low enough for me. After a few attempts to answer some questions early on, I gave up. Read only for me. I don't even remember what the problem was. Why making contributing difficult and consuming easy? I guess it worked for them. Counterintuitive, but nice jackpot.
- bhandziuk 5y ago
  As far as I can remember it's always been this way: very low barrier to entry. All you have to do is make an account to ask and answer questions. I don't know why you had a hard time posting. Maybe you're thinking of commenting? The counter is ExpertsExchange: very difficult to do both.
  - narag 5y ago
    No idea, but I was just trying to answer some questions. I remember vaguely that I needed some points to help and I needed to help to get the points, so... I shrugged and let it be.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      If a question is very popular, a lot of people think it's like a normal forum and post “me too” answers. (Or, at least, they used to, before everyone knew Stack Overflow.) So there's a mechanism to “protect” questions so you need at least 10 rep (on that site – the “you contributed lots on another site so probably aren't a spammer” bonus doesn't count) before you can answer. Very few questions are protected.
  - MrFantastic 5y ago
    The first post on SO for most accounts tend to be from Newbs. The people see the question and think Read The Fucking Manual and downvote. Then you have zero karma and you can't do anything else. The problem is that the Newb doesn't even know where to start in the manual.
- 5y ago

philote 5y ago

I can't downvote your comment here on HN, presumably because I don't have enough reputation. And HN doesn't even tell me.

stingraycharles 5y ago
I think you need 100 points in order to downvote. HN generally prefers to upvote good content rather than to downvote bad content.
- detaro 5y ago
  you need >500 points
  - warrenm 5y ago
    I've got close to 600 ... yet only see the downvote option on very new posts
r00fus 5y ago
It's a mitigation to the "bury brigade" problem digg used to have. I think a relatively low hurdle is a good balance.
marcosdumay 5y ago
You can comment without any problem. Downvoting is not the main usage of HN, like answering questions is on SO (or commenting, it's a wonder that they still allow any kind of activity for people without karma, too bad the only allowed activity is making questions, that will be incorrectly marked and downvoted most of the time).

ljm 5y ago

For me, I just don't use it often enough to log back in. It's largely been supplanted by browsing issue trackers and reading the source. At the same time, google search results are massively less useful now and if I don't get a hit, I'm going to reach out to the source. To that extent, I think SO has the same problem as Google - it will regress to the mean. This is also because google search results will be flooded with SO mirrors that rerender content but with more ads.

johnchristopher 5y ago
I like logging in and bookmark answers I might need later.