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Poll: What is your current Stack Overflow reputation?

546 points by jader201 15y ago

I know that a lot of Hackers frequent Stack Overflow, so I am curious as to how much actual participation there is from Hackers on SO, and what the general reputation of Hackers is. I think it would be particularly interesting to cross reference these results with the "What's Your Favorite Programming Language?" [1] poll. Unfortunately, that would require way too many options. :) [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3746692 Note: please don't forget to vote the poll itself up if you find it valuable/interesting, in order to gather other participation.

maeon3 15y ago
Hacker news should bump up comments of users who have a high stackoverflow karma.
z_ 15y ago
Banned for being too awesome.
kgutteridge 15y ago
just under 2k here which I have always considered average
cmer 15y ago
I'm somewhere near 7. I find Stack Overflow extremely frustrating to use since I never seem to have enough reputation to do anything. If I remember correctly I can't even comment I gave up trying to contribute and I now only leech. I wish they'd fix it because more than once I had insightful things to say but it wasn't worth the hassle.
- jamiecurle 15y ago
  I agree, often I've wanted to add something, but I'm unable to because I haven't participated enough. I'm on the wrong side of the chicken and egg, so I just leech.
  - Piskvorrr 15y ago
    Welllll...it takes, approximately, three to five useful answers. Note that they don't need to be The Answer To Life, Universe, And Everything; they don't need to be the longest, or fastest, or best-looking answers to that question - just useful. I've run a tiny experiment on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/users/779183/friar-tuck http://stackoverflow.com/users/779183/friar-tuck - it took me, from "logout and clear all cookies" to "Commenting privilege unlocked", twenty-five minutes (1500 seconds) of wall-time, start to finish; no cheating, no sockpuppetting - just answering three (3) easy questions in a mildly useful way and watching the upvotes roll in. Alas, "I come to the __Q&A__ site 'often', but can't be bothered to __ask__ or __answer__ anything at all, how come they deny me privileges?" sounds a bit more entitled than "the System keeps me down and prevents me from commenting," doesn't it?
    - jamiecurle 15y ago
      I didn't mean to sound entitled, it's not a big deal to me (and others if I was to hazard a guess). Normally when I hit SO I'm stuck and often it's not on my dollar. I always intend to go back and add something, but when I do have free time, I like to get away from the computer and thus I never end up contributing.
      - Piskvorrr 15y ago
        Well, that's pretty much what many SO's users do; and there's nothing wrong with that :) I have misunderstood your previous post, then, and I'm sorry for that - I thought you were complaining that getting the privileges is too hard.
- cruise02 15y ago
  You only need 50 reputation to comment anywhere on the site. That's only 5 upvotes on a good answer or 10 upvotes on questions. It's an extremely low bar to get over. Note: You can always comment on your own posts (questions or answers).
  - pkamb 15y ago
    It's extremely frustrating when you want to comment on a different Stack Exchange site but can't due to having no reputation... despite the fact that the new account you made is 'linked' to one on Stack Overflow with thousands of rep.
    - cruise02 15y ago
      If you have thousands of reputation on SO then you should get the 100 point bonus on every site where your accounts are associated. If you don't have it, open a support post on Meta (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions) and we'll try to see what's up.
    - pohl 15y ago
      I only have 477 points on SO, yet when I sign up for other stack exchange sites I immediately get 100 free points. The bar really isn't that high. It's just designed to force newbies into those specific activities that one ought focus on first: providing good answers to questions, and asking good questions.
  - polshaw 15y ago
    Well it is a barrier that has stopped me participating too. It is very easy to dismiss these when you, and all those around you, are beyond them.
    - farnsworth 15y ago
      It's a shame that that's kept you, and probably others out. Honestly I think it's worth it to have some small barrier, but whether it's helping much is debatable- there's still been a pretty bad downturn in the quality of content in some areas over the past couple years.
- robsteranium 15y ago
  Judging by my reputation history the best way to reach the 50 points needed to leave comments is (perhaps unsurprisingly) to write some answers! I suggest you find some unanswered questions under tags with which you're familiar. I actually think the system works quite well; most SO comments are worth reading. One peculiarity of the privileges that I've found is that I'm not allowed to make edits with fewer than 6 characters. I've had to leave some pretty significant typos uncorrected.
  - ajo11 15y ago
    Yeah, this thing with the typos must be improved. Quite often it's a matter of 1 or 2 characters.
    - JeremyBanks 15y ago
      Just a point of clarification: users who can edit immediately (those over 2000 rep) can make edits of any length. The length limit is enforced for "suggested edits", which need to be approved by two other users and for which the editor earns +2 reputation.
- timpost 15y ago
  Check out the 'featured' tab and see if you can answer something. Easy way to unlock commenting, and several other privileges. Or just post a few good answers, you'll be able to comment the next day.
  - ntmartin 15y ago
    Good advice. This is usually something I try to do, but invariably some context switch happens and...hey cows! It is nice to give back if possible though.
jimminy 15y ago
1 - But I only use it as a resource and don't participate.
gfosco 15y ago
Hovering at around 12.5k for a while now... SO is fun. I've only asked 2 questions, answered 592. http://stackoverflow.com/users/353988/fosco http://stackoverflow.com/users/353988/fosco
timpost 15y ago
My reputation slowed down to a crawl after becoming a moderator.
- m_myers 15y ago
  I rarely post anymore, but I have enough old content in popular tags to gain close to 1k a month through random upvotes (that's about three votes per day).
  - timpost 15y ago
    I get a little 'interest' too, about 300 - 500 monthly.
- cruise02 15y ago
  Man, tell me about it. I was in the top 10 when I became a mod, now I'm on page 3. btw, this is Bill. :)
  - casperOne 15y ago
    Because the mods haven't all looked at your email addy already and figured it out? =)
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- ivoflipse 15y ago
  Its the same on most sites, my rep has stalled mostly after becoming a moderator on Super User and its the same for most of the others there. However, it doesn't mean that the sites stop being useful, I read a lot of questions, but rarely feel the need to ask a new one.
- casperOne 15y ago
  I'm trying to post, as I want to keep my MVP award (free MSDN subscription, what), but yeah, moderation sucks not just the time, but the will to put something back into the system sometimes.
Osiris 15y ago
When SO first came out I was on it quite a bit but as the community grew larger, I found that I rarely added much value to answering questions beyond what other users were already doing. Now I use it as a great reference tool, like searching how to fix weird IE7 issues (yes, my company still officially supports IE7). For that, it's been a great tool.
randomdata 15y ago
StackOverflow is one site where I never saw the appeal. I have stumbled upon it a few times through it being a top result during search, but the content seemed fairly flat, for lack of a better term. I suppose if you have a very specific question, it gets the job done. However, in the more traditional forum model, I find the discussion that follows the answer to be far more valuable the answer itself. The StackOverflow implementation seems to discourage continuing the conversations once suitable answers are found. It obviously works well for a lot of people, but I just don't get it. Voted do not use.
- adestefan 15y ago
  I have found the signal-to-noise ration to be fairly low every time I look. It's great that there are so many beginners having their questions answered, but I have other things to do with my time.
- michael_miller 15y ago
  SO is good for getting answers to quick commonly asked questions. If I encounter an error, and can't solve it after a few minutes, I'll usually Google it. More often than not, SO is the first result, offering a quick fix for the problem. I'll agree that SO doesn't have the intellectual discussion-based community that HN has, but it's really good for answering quick questions which a lot of people run into.
- jessriedel 15y ago
  > I suppose if you have a very specific question, it gets the job done. However, in the more traditional forum model, I find the discussion that follows the answer to be far more valuable the answer itself. In fact, the mission of SO is precisely that: compile as much knowledge as possible in the form of answers to very specific question. There are many forums out there to cover "enrichment", but until SO came around it was significantly more difficult to find answers to specific questions amid the chaff.
- Wilduck 15y ago
  If you're looking for high quality discussion, SO probably isn't your best bet. Although I have learned a _ton_ about a new topic by doing a search on a topic, and then ordering the questions by votes or favorites. For example, this is the most voted question for haskell, which has some decent discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/how-to-learn-haskell http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/how-to-learn-hask... The second most voted question for the 'c' tag has some interesting discussion on compiler optimization and floating point arithmetic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6430448/why-doesnt-gcc-optimize-aaaaaa-to-aaaaaa http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6430448/why-doesnt-gcc-op... Most of the time I use StackOverflow as kind of a warm up to writing my own code. It's a good intermediary step between reading HN and actually getting something done.
nkassis 15y ago
There is a little bit of gaming in SO that makes it hard to compete with others that are more dedicated to the site. For example, posting a quick answer and then editing it with the answers from others to complete your answer is one I've seen. I don't believe it to be unfair just that it takes effort beyond technical skills to get high rep values in SO. John Skeet aside, he's all technical skills ;p
- cruise02 15y ago
  People rarely upvote crap answers, and all answers are displayed in random order if they have the same score, so being first doesn't really confer any advantage. Quality answers usually float to the top.
  - davelnewton 15y ago
    Technically, being first is an advantage if you're the first to answer and it's accepted and there's 10+ upvotes. If getting another badge is an "advantage".
    - cruise02 15y ago
      If your answer is accepted with 10 upvotes then being first wasn't the advantage, being right was.
  - obtu 15y ago
    I try to reward the first of two answers of similar quality, but the 10' ninja-edit window messes with that.
simonsarris 15y ago
I participate a lot, but almost exclusively in the (HTML5) Canvas tag. Because I don't answer much else I've got a smallish reputation for a frequent visitor(12K). I'm the top answer-er for the Canvas tag, having answered around ~10% of all questions ever asked about Canvas on StackOverflow. I would say that reputation numbers don't necessarily measure engagement per se in S.O. very well. I've found that if I answer a general JavaScript question, even if its an absurdly simple one, I garner more reputation in a few minutes than if I I give a detailed answer to 2-3 in depth canvas questions. If I wanted to pad my reputation I could definitely answer more general JS questions that crop up, but I really enjoy helping people with their canvas projects, so I sorta stick to that domain and try to help with my slightly-more-unique knowledge. Anyway, reputation numbers aren't that important to me. At the end of the day, this is the only encouragement I need: http://i.imgur.com/POZmt.png http://i.imgur.com/POZmt.png
- cruise02 15y ago
  Reputation points in niche tags are definitely harder won than in the popular language tags, but (as you've demonstrated) it's easier to climb to the top of a niche tag and establish yourself as an expert. The real-world reputation you gain from that is more valuable than the reputation score on the site. Great job!
  - pmjordan 15y ago
    The high-traffic tags are full of low-quality or frequently asked questions. The amount of duplication in e.g. the C++ tag is staggering, but there doesn't seem to be a conscious effort to enforce a no-duplicate policy of any kind. Picking out worthwhile questions is difficult with all that noise. Worse, the "unanswered" section is full of questions that have been answered, the asker just never bothered to click accept. After a few upvotes to one of the answers and enough elapsed time that should probably happen automatically. There are also a lot of questions which cannot be answered given the information provided, and the original user is evidently no longer interested in getting it answered. As you say though, you really can help people who have difficult questions in the niche tags (I've been spending far too much time in 'iokit' and 'objective-c++'). One upvote plus your answer accepted (total +25) is all you can hope for, though.
udp 15y ago
The problem with the SO reputation system is that one-sentence answers to some very basic problem end up earning you > 100 reputation, but a long, well-written answer to a niche question gets you maybe 10 or 20. I'm not really sure what the solution to this is (it's not dissimilar to the situation here since the comment scores got hidden).
- Piskvorrr 15y ago
  Not always - see e.g. this (shameless self-plug): http://stackoverflow.com/a/3905805/19746 http://stackoverflow.com/a/3905805/19746 . I don't think there is a solution - popular stuff will be popular. Is a solution needed, though? The point is to get answers - votes from answers are the incentive, but in the end, it's just a bunch of numbers. As long as the results are obvious - e.g. a question with answers having 75%, 15%, 10% and 5% of votes - it's not terribly interesting whether that means 15, 3, 2 and 1 vote, or 750, 150, 100 and 50. Also, being able to vote posts <0 is good - bogus answers will be apparent.
  - aidenn0 15y ago
    I think that one gets so many upvotes because people who know how hard it is to send a lot of e-mail love to point that answer to people who don't (e.g. bosses, clients) making it very useful to a lot of people.
    - Piskvorrr 15y ago
      Exactly! My point wasn't to get a ridiculous number of votes on it. My point in writing this was to be useful - even for me - as a "go-to" answer for the question that gets asked all the time (I did start out short-ish, and expanded it over time). It's an outlier for sure; I think 99.9% of all posts never get beyond 50 votes, and most don't get over 10 - mind you, most of my posts have fewer than 2 votes. With popular topics, you get more votes simply because there are more people looking at your question; does that make this one so great because it has 700+ votes? I'd say it says that sending e-mails is a popular topic, first and foremost - and apparently the question is also somewhat useful. And then the snowball effect kicks in, and the post gets more popular because it's so popular. Anyway, a +5 in a niche (such as this answer which someone gave to me on a rather narrow problem: http://stackoverflow.com/a/413836/19746 http://stackoverflow.com/a/413836/19746 ), to me, carries more weight than +500 in a topic with which everyone is somewhat familiar.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
DrJokepu 15y ago
Around 27000 but I haven't been actively participating since I've 20000, it's still an awesome site but one day I just simply lost interest in participating.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
thought_alarm 15y ago
I'm one of the 83 people who have earned a silver Objective-C badge, whatever that means. Maybe I can get that on a shirt. I was quite active on the site for about a year, and then my enthusiasm for answering questions suddenly dropped off. I don't know if the quality of questions got worse or what. Sometimes I miss the old days of comp.lang.c++.moderated. Except the part about being a C++ programmer, that is.
- chc 15y ago
  If you're answering Objective-C questions, I think quality has definitely dropped off since the site started. These days it's about 50-50 whether a given question will boil down to "I don't understand why different instances of my UIViewController subclass are different objects." (Incidentally, my claim to SO fame is that I was the first person there to get a Ruby badge. I think that makes me king of the hipsters or something.)
debacle 15y ago
I used to participate a lot, but after having ~5 questions go unanswered or only getting shotgun answers, and seeing the general consensus be that a short answer to an easy question is worth more than a long answer to a hard question, I'm not really interested. The reputation isn't of huge interest to me, however the gamification of the site, I think, has led to it being mostly about gamification - It's infinitely easier to find my answer on IRC, reddit, or in meatspace, which should not be the case - SO should be easier than reddit and meatspace for sure.
- cfeduke 15y ago
  I feel the same way - I manage okay answering questions but the tough questions I ask typically go unanswered or are never satisfactorily answered. There just isn't incentive for other people to answer them. (The bounty system doesn't work as intended.)
  - gfosco 15y ago
    Agreed... If I have a question that I really can't find the answer anywhere else, odds are I'm not going to get a good result on SO either. This is why I've only got 2 questions on my profile. One I eventually answered myself, and one with no helpful answer (but someone did make an effort.) Most of the questions on SO are easily answered with a proper Google search. It's a skill that should be taught.
    - debacle 15y ago
      > Most of the questions on SO are easily answered with a proper Google search. Which is kind of counter to Jeff Atwood's recent blog post about the role of asking questions on SO.
funkah 15y ago
I guess I always thought it was a fool's errand to contribute to some company's corpus of knowledge which they will surely sell or profit from, and the only reward is an integer somewhere gets incremented. But it turns out the content on StackOverflow is licensed to the community in some way. So, I don't really have an excuse anymore.
- thenduks 15y ago
  Try just being helpful to other people and not worrying about reputation points and badges and who's going to use the answer for what potentially commercial purpose. It can be pretty rewarding to have someone thank you profusely for helping them figure something out. And you can learn a lot too -- sometimes to answer a question I'll have to actually go and research it a bit, or make a JSFiddle, that kind of thing.
Xion 15y ago
A little above 5k [1]. I used to be quite active in Java, Android and Python department when I was still learning a lot on those topics. Now when I'm a bit more proficient in them I usually do not have motivation to answer questions, for they mostly don't seem interesting enough to be worth the hassle. Ironically, my "best" answer [2] is related to JavaScript & jQuery - something that I don't really use all that much. Probably the biggest problem I find with SO is the speed-typing contest that many questions introduce if they are (1) relatively simple to answer (2) posted under popular tag. I admit I am "guilty" of using this to my advantage few times, but after a while it loses its appeal. For one, it doesn't really encourage posting comprehensive and well thought answer, as you are very likely to lose the "race" this way. Although posting a simple answer fast and iterating it through edits alleviates this issue somewhat, it still feels more like a trivia contest with speed limit rather than an attempt to teach someone a small but valuable lesson. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/users/434799/xion http://stackoverflow.com/users/434799/xion [2] http://stackoverflow.com/a/8277968/434799 http://stackoverflow.com/a/8277968/434799
darrenkopp 15y ago
I was very active during the beta and launch, and was in the top 3 pages by rep for a while, but I became less active just because I didn't have much time. I still go on almost every day, but i just look at the featured questions on front page and maybe will answer one if it's something I know, but usually don't. Most of my reputation points come from residual answers.
- donw 15y ago
  I'm in a similar boat. When they first got out of the gate, I answered a whole bucket of questions, but stopped after about six months when I launched my first startup. Nowadays, the number of unanswered questions on the site is pretty low overall -- we're basically in the long tail of Stack Overflow karma.
- dpark 15y ago
  Ditto, although I cut back my participation mostly because SO turned into a frustrating experience. It's not rewarding to type out a good answer only to be beaten by a bunch of half-assed answers that appeared first. Nor is it rewarding to type out a detailed answer only to have someone come along 5 minutes later post basically the same thing (including stealing the code example) and get chosen as the selected answer. Add to that the deletionist moderation ("Oh, this post from 2008 should have been on SuperUser instead so we'll just delete it") and a number of other issues. At this point, I generally find participation in SO significantly more frustrating than rewarding. I still get about +30 rep per day, but almost all of that is from two answers that date to the very early days of SO.
lifebeyondfife 15y ago
Does anyone have the same problem with SO that I do? I'm an experienced dev in some general / mature technologies, mainly the C-like languages (I know C# inside out) but essentially, nothing too specialised. Anytime I've gone on SO to try to contribute I find it hard to find questions to answer. It's either a race to answer a trivial question quickly, or an obscure - possibly badly worded or incomplete - question that can't be solved. I therefore spend too much time F5-ing to find a new unanswered question which is time consuming in the extreme and not sustainable long term. Is this just a phase to be worked through or do I need to continue dedicating large amounts of time? Or do I just suck and haven't yet taken the hint?
- codesuela 15y ago
  this is my impression of SO too. If you want to gain reputation the most viable approach is to keep hitting F5 and answer simple questions before someone else and therefore it has become a race instead of a display of knowledge if it's reputation that you are hunting for. I believe it wasn't as hectic about one and a half year ago when I joined.
  - rhizome 15y ago
    Except that the simple-question askers tend to be unconcerned with their acceptance rate.
    - brazzy 15y ago
      overall you get a much larger percentage of your reputation from upvotes rather than having your answers accepted.
      - rhizome 15y ago
        I don't care about reputation, just that askers get a much larger portion of my knowledge when they demonstrate that they engage in their community rather than just take, take, take.
- 15y ago
DiabloD3 15y ago
I am vastly surprised there is a 100k+ user. Whoever you are, please out yourself, I'd like to (virtually) shake your hand for a job well done.
CptCodeMonkey 15y ago
I have just a tad under 4K points and been using SO for 3.5 years. In the beginning it was easy to ask or answer questions but now the questions are less abstract and more focused on stuff far off the beaten path.
jxf 15y ago
I'm one of the top-rated users on StackOverflow. While I feel like my answers are high quality, I also feel like I didn't work very hard to get there. There are days where I never log onto StackOverflow but nevertheless earn 100+ points per day. For example, a few weeks back I answered an obscure question about an unusual expression in the Linux kernel. Someone posted it on HN and it blew up. I continue to earn "interest" on that original answer, even though I've contributed nothing of substance to it since then. (IMO, it should become harder for people to earn reputation from answers they've already given over time.) Ultimately, I view the reputation count as something of a quasi-meaningless metric that's nevertheless a good resume booster. I like answering questions and helping people, and that's the main reason I use SO.
- jonstjohn 15y ago
  Completely agree. I'm a mid-range user but participated early on. I answered some very basic questions (how to you rotate an image in jQuery) and continue to accumulate residual reputation almost every day. I've found that it is somewhat harder to get reputation now since a lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been consumed. I still check on it from time to time and think it's a great resource.
why-el 15y ago
A general remark that I always had and wanted to share is how easy it was to boost your reputation in the early days of SO. For instance, questions like "Best practices" for something, or what is a git stash, etc..Some questions are rather very simple and wont get you that much these days, but because somebody was the first to ask them, they got lots of points. My point is, it should have been harder to get points for asking relatively simple questions, and then gradually make it easier for people to get more points for asking questions as they dont have a choice but ask a more challenging question, thus contributing more to SO. PS: I wanted to link to some questions but they are in abundance. just think of a simple question and watch the spectacle of points.
huhtenberg 15y ago
I find participating in SO extremely annoying. Tried few times and gave up. I can't downvote an answer that is patently absurd. I can't upvote an answer that is right. Apparently that's because I have to prove myself first. If I write a response (that damn sure answers the question), it sits at zero, because its usefulness appears to be directly dependent on my reputation, of which I have none. In general, there's just too much reputation whoring going on. Just flipped through the list of opened questions, and I can easily answer 80% of those without thinking. But I won't, because I don't like how SO is treating me. Should they hide all scores similarly to how pg did here, I think it would make the site much more attractive for participation for people like myself. Feel free to disagree (preferably by answering and not downvoting).
- j_baker 15y ago
  Your experience is different than mine. My answers usually seem to get voted up proportionally to how good they are. Granted, it's been a while since I've actively participated, so things may have changed.
- tnorthcutt 15y ago
  I was going to just downvote your reply, until I got to the last line :). Sites like SO have a HUGE "newbie" problem. If they allowed brand new users full permissions to upvote, downvote, etc., there would be a lot more "wrong" votes from people who don't understand the site yet. I started at zero, and yet I was able to gain enough reputation to function. The usefulness of your answer is not directly dependent on your reputation.
- chc 15y ago
  There is a small advantage to having a high rep score, but I haven't noticed it being that big a handicap. Usually the difference is that people with low rep scores just haven't learned how to write a good answer. But given equal quality answers, I haven't noticed that low-rep people are at all that much of a disadvantage. Obviously I can't say for sure, but I really have to believe that either a) you're giving answers on topics that have built up a bad SO community around them, or b) your answers are lacking in some area other than factual correctness.
- 15y ago
eliben 15y ago
47237 [http://stackoverflow.com/users/8206/eli-bendersky http://stackoverflow.com/users/8206/eli-bendersky]
cjkarr 15y ago
I'm under 100. I love Stack Overflow, but the reason that my reputation is so low is that when I'm in software development mode, I'm usually so busy working that I don't have the time to (nor rarely think about) go back and answer some questions. Maybe one of these days when I have the time to step back and think about software development outside the context of a project, I'll go back and chip in. God knows I use it often enough every day.
leeoniya 15y ago
so i have exactly 100 points, what do i click: 1-100 or 100-1000? clicking 1-100.
wildmXranat 15y ago
I participate, but only to the extent that I participate on other sites, which is quite low.
sbierwagen 15y ago
26 rep there, 2016 karma here. Scrolling through the thread I see a lot of people saying exactly what I was going to say about the difficulty of participation, (Can't upvote, downvote, or comment at low levels of karma) and the lack of questions that can be answered; so I won't rehash them.
pm24601 15y ago
SO I find reasonably useful - but answering questions on SO rather than getting shit done is a waste of time. Echoing a lot of the other comments, it is easy to get a high rep by just going for the beginner questions. The easiest way to get "reputation" is by answering an opinion question or asking an opinion question. Once I realized that, I ignored reputation mine or anyone elses. Any complex question I answer on my blog. I then answer the question on SO with a medium length excerpt pointing to my blog. I want to own my content from google's perspective and I rather get google pagerank than SO's reputation. Oh yeah, I should add that the best SE (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments/101989#101989 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should...) answer I gave in terms of upvotes made it to HN. It was an opinion question.
leon_ 15y ago
> 0 - I use Stack Overflow as a resource I'd participate but their etiquette is pretty much a turn off. "This should be a comment", "Post closed", etc. - I'm not particularly fond of bureaucratic processes.
sidcool 15y ago
Mine is 859. Pretty low.
joccam 15y ago
You need a category for negative karma. TY.
aforty 15y ago
I tried to answer some question once and it told me I needed reputation to submit an answer but it was not at all clear how I could acquire reputation to begin with. While I'm sure there's a relatively simple solution to this, I became frustrated and never looked into it further.
veyron 15y ago
Banned for a week because someone complained to the admins because I made a comment that "Windows is not necessarily the best operating system". Gave up soon after.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
kinship 15y ago
This whole issue is fucking retarded. Get out of your mother's basement and finish something.
benatkin 15y ago
I spent a few hours during the course of a week last year and got 1000 in reputation. Most of the points I got were from quickly writing answers to boring questions before someone else could get around to writing an equally good one. I did get some points from going above and beyond, or from answering questions that hadn't been answered for a long time because they were from a niche I was familiar with. I suspect that most of the people with a lot of points are treating it like a game, though.
gcb 15y ago
always bellow 500 because i love to dump oddball questions that get no answer and then i blow 1k on bounties to raise visibility that just die and i never get my reputation back.
hobin 15y ago
I'm somewhere in between 'I don\'t use Stack Overflow' and 'I use Stack Overflow as a resource, but don\'t participate'. It's not that I avoid it as a resource: if I stumble upon the answer to my question at SO via Google, I'll use it. However, I can't really say I've ever actively searched the site, either.
yawner 15y ago
5500
njharman 15y ago
The only time I am subjected to SO is when it's a top search result.
smackfu 15y ago
What does their overall histogram look like?
smackfu 15y ago
I wish the top questions were more interesting, and not so many "what does [some random string of punctutation] do in [language of the day]?" I'm really surprised anyone finds that worthwhile ...
ajdecon 15y ago
Very little on SO (10), but much more on ServerFault (430ish).
onk 15y ago
Will then need to correlate with VimGolf score.
georgieporgie 15y ago
I got tired of the thankless task of doing other peoples' work, along with the overzealous mods shutting down my questions in the most condescending tone possible. In particular, I recall going so far as to read vendor-specific documentation for someone, and providing example code to parse the binary data in question. It was probably an hour of my work and I didn't even get a 'thank you', much less any reputation bump. Talk about devaluing yourself and your industry... (incidentally, I don't know exactly how much rep I have, since the myopenid login I was using just stopped working one day. No idea why, and there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for fixing it. Edit: I managed to log in again. It appears that if you log in to MyOpenID.com for account management, any subsequent attempt to log in to SO will attempt to use that account's credentials rather than the intended user account credentials, and the error results are absolutely useless)
- codyrobbins 15y ago
  I actually don’t use Stack Overflow as a contributor for precisely the same reason: I created my account with an OpenID, the provider is no longer around, and now I can’t log in nor fix it.
  - aalear 15y ago
    You can create a new account and ask for the accounts to be merged.
    - sanxiyn 15y ago
      Since I am in this exact situation (lost OpenID provider), can you explain how does this work? Any link to documentation?
      - obtu 15y ago
        http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/18232/how-can-one-link-merge-combine-associate-two-accounts-users-anonymous-unregist http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/18232/how-can-one-li...
doug1001 15y ago
Here's what i find annoying. There are so many StackExchange sites now. I have been participating in SO for about 2 years (15K). One tag i like to watch/answer is "machine-learning." ML questions are now spread across so many SE sites: Cross-Validated (Stats), Machine Learning, Computer Science, Computational Science", Numerical Modeling & Simulation--and more on the way, Information Retrieval, Bioinformatics, Computational Linguistics*. Because of this, SO is a lot less interesting for me. It's time consuming to track down the Questions from across all relevant Sites; about half of the questions have comments telling the OP to post elsewhere ("maybe this belongs on ....") and/or multiple votes to close. And the worst part--as a programmer, i would much rather have the computational linguist answering ML questions on SO than on a specialist site (of which there is one). Maybe those guys benefit by becoming better programmers, but i certainly benefit from their deep knowledge of how to solve ML problems. Their answer is code, just like mine, but from an entirely different perspective, more often than not it's humbling.
- m_myers 15y ago
  It is possible to set up a cross-site question filter on stackexchange.com (http://stackexchange.com/filters http://stackexchange.com/filters). As far as I can tell, it only allows filtering by tags, not full text, so your mileage may vary.
liftup 15y ago
458. Generally been pair programming but always consider stack for advice. I'd be interested in setting time to helping others there.
brandonhall 15y ago
Don't really have to much add except that I love StackOverflow. It's been helpful so many times.
mr_pppoe 15y ago
There are more and more entry-level questions now, I think StackOverflow really need to provide some more advanced filters to help moderate one's question list.
eblackburn 15y ago
I seem to be acquiring points from both spurious and cheeky comments made years ago and answers, that haven't been expected. I thank those that participate, but I don't have the inclination to dedicate myself to the cause.
bozho 15y ago
100k+ (159 to be precise). I've been very active for 2 years, but lately I have a little less time. A couple of months ago I shared my SO experience in this post http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=658 http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=658
sneakyness 15y ago
I'd like to see a giant survey that cross references favorite languages vs favored zones of activity in stack overflow vs total reputation vs number of stack overflow badges.
darylteo 15y ago
Just hit 2500 recently =) mostly in C#/Java and other OOP related stuff.
mjcohenw 15y ago
I participate in the math SO. I find it a nice challenge. My reputation is at 1335.
engtech 15y ago
wow, just realized I'm user 175 http://stackoverflow.com/users/175/engtech http://stackoverflow.com/users/175/engtech
RJF 15y ago
"1-100", but then "100-1000". And if my reputation is 1000, shall I vote for "100-1000" or "1000-2500"? ;)
antihero 15y ago
I tried to participate and help someone quite while back, but it wouldn't let me, so I said sod this and moved on. It usually comes up in Google results though, which is handy.
egor83 15y ago
Results visualization: http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=3771286&chart_type=bar http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=3771...
alimbada 15y ago
Poll needs a "Who gives a <BLEEP>?!" option. ;)
citizen428 15y ago
~16.5k, mostly from Ruby where I'm currently #10 in the All Time answers list (and accordingly also the 10th user to get the gold Ruby badge).
justncase80 15y ago
Nice bell curve there.
dansul 15y ago
Does anyone else think reputation "points" don't necessarily indicate the level of expertise a programmer has ? I've seen profiles of programmers on SO where they asked to vote their questions so they could receive a certain badge that is very rare to acquire. I don't think it should be like this. SO is still a great resource but I just don't agree with some of the things they do and how they do them. I can also confirm that some moderators are condescending.
crasshopper 15y ago
Don't forget to adjust for the (unconditional) distribution of scores on SO itself.
tolitius 15y ago
I find SO rather too addictive. I "played" it for a month, even got in "top 0.2%" for one of the weeks. It was tons of fun, but... no healthy balance. Now days I still consume almost every day, but produce a bare minimum ( very similar model to US economy :) ). I love SO, but I understand complaints about "rude" comments and lots of duplications. The thing is most people even with 10K+ ratings don't really know the subject (and got there by producing that same "duplication" instead of "closing as duplicate"), and these very people tend to be a lot ruder, since it is a "self defensive" way to a "self proof" that they really are worth something ( e.g. Psyc 101 ). However people who really "grok it" tend to be the most helpful and fun to talk to. Oh.. and the search. SO search sucks. I always Google my way into site:so in order to find anything.. But I guess SO knows there is Google, and does not care. Well I do! Fix it! :) Again, SO rating mostly became a game, and since now it can also mean something on a resume (although personally I don't believe that resume itself means anything), more and more people try to game the system, and many of them winning the game. e.g. two years ago the content on SO was _really_ to the point. Now you need to click around to "find it". Two years from now... something new will emerge? :)
riazrizvi 15y ago
only 54 stackoverflow users have a reputation over 100k, that means 30% of the elephants are on HN
ycedmart 15y ago
More than 2k rep on SO (cool, I can edit ; ) in three months or so (one question, all the rest being answers and editing -- won a lot of +2 with my edits, before I was 2k rep). But I consider closing my account (and even behaving a bit like an ae by 'ragequitting' and purposefully destroying my most upvoted answers: I know it's bad, but I feel like I got cheated and saw my time "stolen" for me). Overzealous mods did delete two perfectly fine answers because the question (not my answers) were offtopic. You can point out as much as you want that for SEO purposes SO explains that near-dupes are not that bad and that the time you spent answering should not be wasted by an overzealous mod (only removing value, by destroying what others created), they'll come with excuses and always refuse to admit wrongdoing. You can criticize me as much as you want and tell me it's childish (I'm 40) to "ragequit" but I honestly feel I've been cheated by the site. I was a well-behaving user there (still am), helping people (50 answers for one question). And then I encountered an overzealous mod not only acting like an arse using his mod power but also acting like a condescending jerk in comments.

ajo11 15y ago

It's not just you :D The way I see it working: 1. Go to homepage. 2. Find unanswered questions that you can answer and answer them. In the process, elaborate with the OP, to help as much as you can. 3. Go to 1 until you become efficient enough (maybe 3 mins max), to be the first to answer a detailed answer (Usually the easy questions get a lot of hots, since more people are trying to answer those, so try to be the first to answer). 4. Hope that the question police won't close the question as not real question (usually noobs at programming or just on specified tags AND super-noobs at English can not even describe / explain what the problem is, but you can figure it out for them). I spot a problem here: The whole deal is to help people with their problems. Even if their problems include poor English / programming skills. You can not reject them by saying: "Hey! Learn English and then we'll tell you the solution." or "Hey! Come back in 3 months, when you'll be a better coder, so that you can explain better what you need. Then we'll tell you the solution.". I think some moderators stick so much to the rules, that forget the original plan of helping the fellow coders. 5. Go to 1 for countless hours (currently on popular tags, such as PHP, Javascript, jQuery, HTML I calculated that I can increase my rep about 10 per hour, near-fail rate, right?). You have nothing to lose. Answering makes you better. If you get a few downvotes, then you'll start check and double check before answering. And a few rules of the thumb: FIFO: Usually the OP gives the correct answer to the person that answers first (As it should be). Reputation goes to reputation: When there are 4 or 5 similar answers, the persons with the higher rep get the most upvotes (reasonable, but probably unfair). Use an example: Even if the question goes like "should I use A or B to do this?" and you know that A is the way to go, you don't just answer "Use A". You will get downvoted. But if you answer "Use A. I would do it like this: ...", then you might get a few upvotes (insane for me, but considering that you are helping to build a knowledge base, I'd say tolerable). Learn stuff: the more you know, the more questions you may answer (now we're getting somewhere). Spend your valuable free time on answering questions: It is a very nice feeling to give back to a community that you got from (and usually you get multiple times what you give). And it is a very nice feeling to support a worldwide knowledge base for your profession. But, since you compete with other professionals, you have to devote a lot of time to stand out, not by being the best, but by being the best on answering questions (not the same and kind of lame). Stop thinking "Hey!? Did I just work for free the past x hours?": You just helped someone else! And in the future more people will benefit from your answer! (some things are just priceless :D).

redler 15y ago
As to your fourth point: if you're able to figure out what a poorly written question is asking and post a good answer, it's probably worth taking a couple of minutes to edit the question to improve its clarity.

lambda 15y ago

First of all, you have to ask yourself how important is this. Is it important for you to get a lot of reputation? Or is it just important to help people out? There are a lot of things that you can do that help people out that don't gain you a lot of reputation. For example, those badly worded and incomplete questions. You will almost never get much rep from answering those; but you can help that person out a lot, by providing an answer that describes how to formulate their question better, asks them for the extra information they need, shows them how to provide a minimal example of the problem at hand. Then as they edit their question to post this extra information, you can try and use that to flesh out your answer, until you have answered their question for them. By the end, you will probably only get one or two upvotes and an accepted answer (at best, sometimes they just give up), but you will have helped explain to them how better to ask questions, and how better to solve the problem on their own. Beyond that, sometimes you just have to answer questions quickly and get lucky. I spent some time "playing" StackOverflow like an MMO, and learned some tricks for getting rep (while still doing a good job of answering peoples questions). To do well on questions on popular tags, find ones with no answers yet (or only one or two answers) that you can answer. If it can be answered in a sentence, do so. Then edit your answer. Flesh it out. Provide links to the documentation. Write a sample program demonstrating how it works. That way, you got in quick with the one-sentence answer. If that is what they need, they may accept it and you're done. You may also get early upvotes. The edit, to have a more in-depth answer, will make your answer a lot more useful than all of the other quick and dirty answers. So if they needed something more in-depth, they will appreciate the extra information. People always appreciate links to docs, and short and sweet example code. Some people appreciate an answer that expands a little bit, describes more generally how something works to put the answer in context and allow them to figure that out in general. Here's an example of that strategy at work: http://stackoverflow.com/posts/793867/revisions http://stackoverflow.com/posts/793867/revisions . In fact, I believe there was another edit that's not shown (if you do an edit within a certain window, it gets merged into the last edit). I think that I just started out with the first two lines; the most basic answer. I then expanded a little bit, to cover some other possible cases (as I couldn't tell precisely what they needed from the question). Then I Googled for the documentation, and provided links to it, to help them find other information they might want to know. Another strategy is to find a hard problem, and spend the time and effort running it to ground. These problems don't come up often, but when they do, they can be really good ones to solve. They can substantially help people out. They are usually much more interesting, and you can learn new things while trying to solve them. For example, here's one where I didn't know the answer when I first saw the question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1990464/efficiency-of-purely-functional-programming http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1990464/efficiency-of-pur... . In fact, I saw the question, thought it was interesting, and wanted to find out the answer; several people had "answered" it, but their logic was so bad that I couldn't let those answers stand (there are a number of answers on that question that have since been deleted by their authors, which you can only see if you have a high reputation, but the answer that's at -15 should give you an idea of the quality of many of the earlier answers). Luckily, I had a bood that I knew would probably answer the question, or give me the starting point. I pulled out that book, found the appropriate references, Googled them, found the papers in question, skimmed through those, and summarized it all. It took me a half an hour to an hour to do so, and then I read the papers in more detail and posted a substantial edit that went into a lot more detail a few hours later. That took some serious effort, but it has been one of my highest voted answers. So, in summary, doing a good job on the writeup can be important. Provide context, links, references, sample code. Quick throwaway answers will sometimes answer the question, but people like a little extra information (as long as it isn't tl;dr like this comment). If you can't solve easy problems quickly enough, either solve more obscure problems, solve harder problems, or just do a better job answering those easy problems. Don't worry too much about your reputation; it can be a serious time sink to get a lot of reputation. I have spent time climbing the reputation ladder as fast as possible, and I spent way too much time doing so.

cruise02 15y ago

> overzealous mods shutting down my questions in the most condescending tone possible. SO moderator here. We just click a link. The pre-defined close reasons are inserted automatically. No one is taking a tone with you.

georgieporgie 15y ago
We just click a link Comments. No one is taking a tone with you. Oh, the irony.
- cruise02 15y ago
  Comments. What about them? The close message is auto-inserted so we don't have to take the time to comment. Irony, no. My tone here is a response to being called overzealous and condescending. It has nothing to do with my attitude when I'm acting as moderator on SO.
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    I don't understand why you seem to be attempting to speak for all moderators. I don't know or care what your attitude is about moderation, I'm speaking of my own personal experience with SO moderators.
    - cruise02 15y ago
      Provide some links, please.
      - georgieporgie 15y ago
        I'm not linking my online identities.
        ycedmart 15y ago
        And you don't have to. And you do not have to answer to that SO mod's request here for several people here agree with you and know you're not making this up.
      - ycedmart 15y ago
        There's no need for anyone to provide links. A lot of people are complaining about this. And as soon as anyone tries to post in meta about this issue (the issue of mods over-zealously closing questions), these posts in meta get downvoted to no avail and there's a flamefest of "high horse" posts... By mods! Constantly defending themselves, just like you do here. It's always the same "link or it didn't happen" and then the exact same "oh but I wasn't using a 'tone' here". Yes you were. And you know it. And several people here agree...
        cruise02 15y ago
        "Link or it didn't happen" is a perfectly valid response to empty complaints that provide no evidence. As a moderator I'm in a position to actually do something about real problems. If you just whine and complain without giving me a link I can't do anything about it. No, I wasn't taking a tone. If I was I wouldn't say that I wasn't. If you perceived a tone, it's on your end. I'd thank you to not call me a liar.
- lhnn 15y ago
  That word: I don't think it means what you think it means.
  - compay 15y ago
    Sorry, no grammar cop points for you. That was a correct usage of the word "irony."
    - Laxman13 15y ago
      Not sure the point was to be grammar cop. I, at least, took it as a line from The Princess Bride (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes?qt=qt0482717 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes?qt=qt0482717)
    - lhnn 15y ago
      No, it wasn't. Either he was implying the SO mod was being inappropriate (wrong), or he used the word incorrectly.
      - compay 15y ago
        >>> in the most condescending tone possible. >> No one is taking a tone with you. > Oh, the irony. Condescendingly telling someone "nobody is taking a tone with you." That's the irony you're missing.
cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
The comments moderators post are pretty condescending. They turned me off from SO. Not to mention the condescending nature of your comment here.
- cruise02 15y ago
  After calling us overzealous and condescending do you expect a hug?
rbarooah 15y ago
The fact that you use automation to produce your responses doesn't make you any less responsible for them.
- cruise02 15y ago
  I'm not shirking responsibility for putting the responses there. I'm saying that they aren't condescending. The messages are to inform people why their question was closed and to help them improve it.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    If the messages are written in a tone that people generally find condescending, then they are condescending. The intent may be positive but doesn't change the impact of the writing style. As a matter of interest, do these template responses make it clear that they are indeed templates and not hand written?
    - cruise02 15y ago
      They're not inserted as comments, but as a block of text that's offset from the rest of the post, so I think it's pretty clear that they're auto-inserted. You can search the site for "closed:1" to find questions with different messages that get inserted. http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=closed%3A1 http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=closed%3A1
      - rbarooah 15y ago
        Fair enough - it does look obvious to me that those are automatic 'rubber stamps'. They don't read as particularly condescending to me, but I imagine that if one was used in error or with questionable judgement it might well come off that way. Is there any mechanism for quality control on how they are used?
        cruise02 15y ago
        There is some control over how they're used. In most cases it takes 5 users with at least 3000 reputation to vote to close a question. The close reason that the majority selected is the one that gets displayed. Moderators (and employees of Stack Exchange) can close questions with a single vote if they're flagged, but we generally try to encourage people to use close votes if they have that ability. Also, any closed question can be reopened by community vote whether it was closed by a moderator or by voting.

bdg 15y ago

I'm not even a moderator, but if you as a bad question I vote to close it. That's how the site works. Even if you feel you put a lot of work into something doesn't mean it's a valid question to the site. Read the FAQ.

compay 15y ago
>> along with the overzealous mods shutting down my questions in the most condescending tone possible. > Read the FAQ. Your response seems to be a a perfect demonstration of what he's complaining about.
- bdg 15y ago
  Help me understand what's condescending about being a normal user to the site (ie, I don't work for Stack Exchange, nor am I a moderator) and telling him to read the FAQ. Help me understand this.
  - compay 15y ago
    Ok, I'm going to assume that you actually want me to explain, and not that this is just an argument tactic you're using to try to score debate points. I hope I'm correct. The OP's complaint was presented in a reasonable tone of voice, was articulate and carefully worded. Now, it may be that he has misunderstood something about Stack Overflow, or that he's looking for something the site doesn't provide. But, the OP does not come off as an idiot or a troll. Your response to "read the FAQ" treats him as if he were a fool (the exact word you used in another reply). It was also so hastily typed, that you misspelled "ask" as "as" and you obviously cared so little about your writing, that you didn't notice this and go back to redit your comment and fix it. So to sum up: somebody posts a carefully worded, slightly angry but non-offensive complaint, and you rapidly dash off a short, typo-ridden response telling him to read the FAQ. In other replies to the same user, you put words in his mouth and beat him up like a straw man. You come off as an angry, petulant, mean-spirited and unreasonable person. In other words, condescending.
georgieporgie 15y ago
First off, realize that I don't actually care about the FAQ or site rules at all. I care about getting value out of a site. That's true of everyone. Second, I asked a question, and I believe it was a good one. However, it was closed for being "too conversational," whatever that means. Instead of merely answering my question, the mods instead chose to make condescending comments, which eventually lead to an answer in the comments, so why not just answer the question in the first place? SO mods think their job is to eliminate 'bad' questions. But that's not their job. Their job is to foster a community and a valuable site. Look at all the 'bad' questions which have made it onto HN and Reddit that have been closed by an overzealous mod, then re-opened due to mass appeal. Overzealous SO mods are a known problem, so much so that they've alluded to it repeatedly on the SO podcast.
- bdg 15y ago
  > First off, realize that I don't actually care about the FAQ Has it ever occurred to you that you're a fool? You complain about the site and have no regard for the rules or what the site is. It's not your spam-filled phpBB site that you dump the same 'plzzz halllpp I can't get $_[get] when I make a post!!11' nonsense onto every day. > it was closed for being "too conversational," whatever that means I'm calling you out on this. Link to your question. You're totally full of it, there is no "too conversational" option. There does happen to be a "too localized" question, which is something we pick when users think the site is a place to dump thousands of lines of code and ask a question nobody else will ever have (ie, lazy slobs who don't read the FAQ and know what the site's about). In short, you're full of it.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    Your aggressive tone is unhelpful. There was / is a "closed as not constructive" - as well as getting the moderator's comment for closing the questioner could have had other comments from users pointing out that conversational questions are not welcome on SO.
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    Has it ever occurred to you that you're a fool? Wow. You complain about the site and have no regard for the rules or what the site is. You have completely failed to understand what I wrote. SO mods, instead of working to form community and value, have become trigger-happy bureaucrats. The entire method by which mods operate is, in many cases, opposed to the stated goals of SO. Link to your question. I have zero intention of linking my online identities, and I don't care in the least whether or not you believe me.
  - ycedmart 15y ago
    He's not full of it at all. He's describing a very real SO issue (one of many) and, as usual, the SO-fanbois/shills are getting on their high-horse explaining that SO is perfect, that there is nothing to see, that mods cannot possibly be overzealous, etc. And all this using a "tone", as usual...
- 15y ago