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This user Gordon Linoff hit one million reputation points on Stack Overflow in August 2020 (now one year later he's at 1.17M): https://meta.stackoverflow.com/qu
by EForEndeavour 5y ago
This user Gordon Linoff hit one million reputation points on Stack Overflow in August 2020 (now one year later he's at 1.17M): https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/400506/congratulations-for-reaching-a-million-gordon-linoff https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/400506/congratulati...
> This comes after an astonishing amount of 71,839 answers (and 0 questions!). He only joined in 2012, so that's an average of ~22.8 answers per day, every day, for the last 3144 days.To put perspective on the numbers, the second answerer on the site is Jon Skeet (our first millionaire) with 35K answers and then several others with 20k+
- jchw 5y agoAbsolutely astonishing. Answering questions on a Q&A site may not on its own be heroic, but at this scale it’s hard to see it as any less.
- deltree7 5y agoIf you look at many people's reddit/usenet/facebook comment history, 23 entries per day isn't much
- somehnguy 5y agoIt is when you do it for 3144 days in a row. Plus they're not just a bunch of 'lol' type low effort responses.
- bwship 5y agoHaha, yea, this isn't like having a snap streak of showing a funny face to your friend for 3,144 days. But alas, the internet at large probably thinks that is a harder feat than this.
- jchw 5y agoI don’t disagree with your statement at all. However, people who contribute useful edits to Wikipedia or high quality answers to Stack Overflow are doing a bit more work than your average Facebook poster :) sorry you’re getting buried on this, I assume your point wasn’t necessarily that it wasn’t more useful than that.
- deltree7 5y agoYes, I was merely commenting about Volume. Also, if you are passionate about a topic, replying answers comes very naturally to you. But I don't expect HN to get it
- jchw 5y agoThe way I see it, there’s not as much of a gap as people think between the 99th percentile and 50th percentile users, because being active on one of these sites isn’t that difficult. However, I think this person does stick out. It seems there is a massive gap between them and even second place. I think that’s what really makes this astonishing.
- Someone1234 5y agoI don't think we can equate the effort between answering technical questions and a comment on Reddit/Facebook. While the occasional comment feels like work (e.g. citations), that isn't the norm so 23/day is meaningless. Plus SO answers actually contribute positively to the world, whereas arguably social media comments do not.
- doc_gunthrop 5y agoThis. [ example meant to highlight the difference between a low-impact, low-effort comment from a social media site like reddit versus sites like SO where some degree of technical expertise is a precondition ]
- breakfastduck 5y agoHow is throwaway comments and opinions on generic social media sites in any way comparable to answering questions on a very technical subject in order to assist people working in said technical area?
- wubin 5y agoStack Exchange sites are not mere social media but more like an encyclopedia for specific topics. Answering as well as asking good questions requires extensive research and being mindful of future readers. Sad to see SE contributors are compared with FB users.
- Breza 5y agoAgreed! I'm active on several SE sites and every quality answer takes me time to research, write, and edit.
- ridiculous_leke 5y agoI don't think you are being serious when you mention Facebook and Reddit.
- irrational 5y agoYes, because posting memes is just as easy as posting technical answers.
- burntoutfire 5y agoHeroes are sacrificing themselves for the sake of others. Here we don't know if it was a sacrifice or merely an unusual hobby.
- freyr 5y ago- person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. - the chief male character in a book, play, or movie, who is typically identified with good qualities, and with whom the reader is expected to sympathize. - (in mythology and folklore) a person of superhuman qualities and often semidivine origin, in particular one whose exploits were the subject of ancient Greek myths.
- deltree7 5y agoImpressive!. But if you look at many people's comment history on reddit/Usenet/Facebook/Twitter/Slashdot it isn't hard to find 25 entries per day. Also an eye-opener about how much time an average person spends on message boards typing shit when they can be creating volumes of artifacts
- Ragib_Zaman 5y agoAnswering a technical question takes more time and effort than making general comments.
- caslon 5y agoSolving problems for random people on StackOverflow helps them (the user, the corporation, and StackOverflow) make cash while not compensating you, and it also requires relevant knowledge and effort to communicate concisely and correctly. On the other hand, people on Hacker News, Facebook, Tumblr, /. and so on don't actually have to know anything, and their contributions only make money for the host company, and barely so in some cases. Reddit, as an example, isn't really profitable because of its average user. I contribute to similar things, myself, pretty frequently, but let's not pretend like social media and collaborative knowledge projects are completely equivalent and that effort spent is transitive.
- Salgat 5y agoI can bullshit for hours but answering even a few technical problems in a well written fashion is exhausting work.
- lmilcin 5y agoYou need to understand these are not only technical answers to technical questions, but also highly valuable ones because people must indicate that they "like" the answer. Most even good answers get very little rep so the answers have to be pretty good to get that amount of rep on average.
- codehawke 5y agoI wonder how much rep, has to do with who decides to up vote? If you see Jon Skeet answer, people will up vote him more than the average user with 5k. This is a subjective opinion of course.
- darthvoldemort 5y agoHow accurate are his answers? Have they been validated for correctness?
- Someone1234 5y agoIf we use votes as a proxy for helpfulness, I'd argue most were "validated" by the community for helpfulness. "Correctness" is subjective and unprovable.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago> "Correctness" is subjective and unprovable. Can you clarify how literally you mean that? Because a statement like "1+1=3" objectively incorrect, given the usual conventions about what I would mean with that equation.
- everythingswan 5y agoWith SQL, there are many different ways to write a query and to get the correct result returned to you. Instead of "1+1=2" being the only answer, it'd be more like: "1+1=2", "2+0=2", and "0+2=2". All are correct. In my experience on SO with both SQL and Python, there are usually a number of correct answers for every question. How correct it is depends on things that usually aren't in the question: size of the data set, dependencies or processes that may break as a result of answer, etc.
- setr 5y agoIt’s easy to show that something is incorrect, because it doesn’t meet the base requirements of the question posed, or correct because it does. It’s difficult to show a correct answer is good, or the best, for the question. Many answers you find on SO both provide a correct answer, as well as try to defend against and call out potential pitfalls and assumptions. Many answers also achieve at best “technically correct”, giving something that works, but slow, error-prone, inelegant, and really just a Bad Idea. Technically correct is mostly a waste of time, unless nothing better exists. If this user is just technically correct (he’s probably not constantly wrong because he has more points than answers), then he’s ultimately not much better than your regular shitposter.
- MuffinFlavored 5y ago> 22.8 answers per day, every day, for the last 3144 days I wonder if his employer is on board + supportive with this use of his time.
- bachmeier 5y agoI believe it's this guy[1], so it's safe to assume his boss is on board with spending his time that way. [1] http://data-miners.com/linoff.htm http://data-miners.com/linoff.htm
- da_chicken 5y agoOkay, but that site is quite dead and has been for a long time. The homepage has Flash on it, and the linked blogs haven't been updated in 5 years.
- dylan604 5y agoIf you're answering 23 questions on SO per day, you don't have time to maintain a website. Especially that initial time sink of converting from a Flash based site.
- da_chicken 5y agoIf it's occupying his life so much that he hasn't updated the homepage for his technology consulting firm in 5 to 10 years, then he seriously hope he's retired because the alternative is really not good.
- necheffa 5y agoHe could be retired.
- biddit 5y agoWhy do you make the assumption that he does this on company time?