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I have found lots of good answers on SE sites (almost all completely via Google) and I don't think it's getting any worse. I do find it hard to participate in

by jcurbo 14y ago

I have found lots of good answers on SE sites (almost all completely via Google) and I don't think it's getting any worse. I do find it hard to participate in the sites as I almost never have a question that is not already answered, which is a drag because without sufficient rep you can't vote on answers, and I don't want to just add comments because it feels like I'm just adding noise. I did finally get enough rep on Server Fault that I can upvote things, which may help there. But I don't want to go through a concerted effort on each and every SE site I care about in order to participate. Maybe that's what SE wants (I know they want strong communities, I listened to the SE podcast since the very beginning) but it feels like a limiting factor to me.

kmontrose 14y ago
You can vote before you can comment (15 and 50 rep generally speaking). Once you get over 200 rep anywhere in the network, you'll automatically get a +100 rep bonus on other sites you join so you don't have to "grind it out" for the basic privileges. The low rep hurdles (anything < 100) are basically "know how everything works" bars (the number of people who mistake "answer" for "forum-style reply" and "community close votes" as "moderators" backs up the need for such hurdles), the high ones (down vote, edit, close, etc.) are the "strong community" ones.
- jcurbo 14y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of some of those numbers. I still find the question hurdle to be the biggest... I personally just haven't found the time or energy to go and find questions I can answer, or do research necessary to answer. My gut feeling is that SE's post structure, handling of reputation and permissions is overly complex... feature creep in a way. I am glad to hear that your rep can affect other sites rep. I feel like the fractured approach doesn't work very well and it is good to see some improvements in account handling from the beginning like: - Easier account creation and management(openid feels very arcane and this has smoothed out a lot since the beginning I think) - Logging you back on when you visit (I guess they changed how they did session cookies or something, I get these 'welcome back' messages now) - Cross-site notifications and relationships Maybe if they had gone with centralized SE accounts at the beginning with per-site reputations it would have been simpler. The current method might be because of how SE evolved from the 'original trilogy'.

by jcurbo 14y ago

kmontrose 14y ago

You can vote before you can comment (15 and 50 rep generally speaking). Once you get over 200 rep anywhere in the network, you'll automatically get a +100 rep bonus on other sites you join so you don't have to "grind it out" for the basic privileges. The low rep hurdles (anything < 100) are basically "know how everything works" bars (the number of people who mistake "answer" for "forum-style reply" and "community close votes" as "moderators" backs up the need for such hurdles), the high ones (down vote, edit, close, etc.) are the "strong community" ones.

jcurbo 14y ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of some of those numbers. I still find the question hurdle to be the biggest... I personally just haven't found the time or energy to go and find questions I can answer, or do research necessary to answer. My gut feeling is that SE's post structure, handling of reputation and permissions is overly complex... feature creep in a way. I am glad to hear that your rep can affect other sites rep. I feel like the fractured approach doesn't work very well and it is good to see some improvements in account handling from the beginning like: - Easier account creation and management(openid feels very arcane and this has smoothed out a lot since the beginning I think) - Logging you back on when you visit (I guess they changed how they did session cookies or something, I get these 'welcome back' messages now) - Cross-site notifications and relationships Maybe if they had gone with centralized SE accounts at the beginning with per-site reputations it would have been simpler. The current method might be because of how SE evolved from the 'original trilogy'.