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Disregarding the current date, this is actually a great idea. Instant gratification for a fee. Yes, I'd pay for that. They could recruit their experts from the

by wilhelm 14y ago

Disregarding the current date, this is actually a great idea. Instant gratification for a fee. Yes, I'd pay for that. They could recruit their experts from the community itself, limited to those over a certain karma threshold, adding further incentive to participate.

hkmurakami 14y ago
Sounds like what Quora is/was doing with their currency system (are they still doing this?)
CamperBob2 14y ago
I'd definitely find it useful, and would pay for it. The trick is figuring out how to recruit/pay the "experts" who would need to be fairly high-value people but who would nevertheless have to make themselves available on a moment's notice. And it had better not be implemented as one of those stupid unsolicited pop-up chat windows.
gav 14y ago
The question I always have is: is a high karma a meaningful measurement of somebody's abilities?
- wilhelm 14y ago
  No, but it is a meaningful measurement of participation.
  - frou_dh 14y ago
    ...and in a lot of cases, account age. I haven't participated in Stack Overflow for years, but there's still a steady trickle of points accumulating from my mediocre questions and answers of old.
    - matchu 14y ago
      I still visit the site regularly just to see how many new rep points I've gotten from old answers. What is my life?
- Mahn 14y ago
  Nope. On SO at least there are lots of folks who amassed hundreds of thousands of reputation merely for being on the site early enough to be able to answer simple and common questions like "how I can remove an array member" and the like.
  - NickLarsen 14y ago
    I'm pretty sure the folks who have amassed "hundreds of thousands of reputation" did it merely by answering 1000's of questions. http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/105837/how-many-questions-have-people-with-over-100-000-rep-answered http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/105837/how... Sure there are a few questions with highly voted up answers because they are widely useful, but there is certainly the minority of high rep earners. Even the new people who are gaining lots of rep are doing it by answering hundreds of questions. http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=newusers http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=newusers
- mediumdeviation 14y ago
  Only partially. It's a combined measure of your knowledge and participation on the site. > As a registered user, your reputation on the site is a part of your identity on the site. It reflects, to an extent, your familiarity with the site, the amount of subject matter expertise you have and the level of respect your peers have for you. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/7238/150097 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/7238/150097 In addition to that, it is possible to write well written, but highly specialized answers that gain few upvotes, or relatively simple answers that accrue large number of upvotes simply because it is a common question. In this sense, reputation is a measure of how 'valuable' your contribution to the site is, which is often, but not always aligned with how knowledgeable you are. There are other outliers too, like answers that get featured on Proggit or HN, but those are far less common. (It also used to be possible to gain large amount of reputation by simply being the first to reply to a poll with a popular answer, but those type of questions are no longer acceptable).
darkchasma 14y ago
Fools aside, this is a horrible idea. There are no experts here. There are loud people, and people with friends, but no community votes up the experts, only the eloquent, or the charismatic. Einstein wasn't president, JFK was. Some occasions, that's okay, but if I'm paying actual money, it certainly isn't.
- dionidium 14y ago
  You don't think the top users on SO are experts?
  - pekk 14y ago
    The question is whether they are domain experts or SO experts
    - sklivvz1971 14y ago
      That's a false dichotomy.
- saryant 14y ago
  I've seen people ask questions about Scala on SO and get answers from Martin Odersky, the language's inventor. I'd say that counts as an expert.
  - darkchasma 14y ago
    I agree 100%, and it's my point.

by wilhelm 14y ago

hkmurakami 14y ago

Sounds like what Quora is/was doing with their currency system (are they still doing this?)

CamperBob2 14y ago

I'd definitely find it useful, and would pay for it. The trick is figuring out how to recruit/pay the "experts" who would need to be fairly high-value people but who would nevertheless have to make themselves available on a moment's notice. And it had better not be implemented as one of those stupid unsolicited pop-up chat windows.

gav 14y ago

The question I always have is: is a high karma a meaningful measurement of somebody's abilities?

wilhelm 14y ago
No, but it is a meaningful measurement of participation.
- frou_dh 14y ago
  ...and in a lot of cases, account age. I haven't participated in Stack Overflow for years, but there's still a steady trickle of points accumulating from my mediocre questions and answers of old.
  - matchu 14y ago
    I still visit the site regularly just to see how many new rep points I've gotten from old answers. What is my life?
Mahn 14y ago
Nope. On SO at least there are lots of folks who amassed hundreds of thousands of reputation merely for being on the site early enough to be able to answer simple and common questions like "how I can remove an array member" and the like.
- NickLarsen 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure the folks who have amassed "hundreds of thousands of reputation" did it merely by answering 1000's of questions. http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/105837/how-many-questions-have-people-with-over-100-000-rep-answered http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/105837/how... Sure there are a few questions with highly voted up answers because they are widely useful, but there is certainly the minority of high rep earners. Even the new people who are gaining lots of rep are doing it by answering hundreds of questions. http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=newusers http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=newusers
mediumdeviation 14y ago
Only partially. It's a combined measure of your knowledge and participation on the site. > As a registered user, your reputation on the site is a part of your identity on the site. It reflects, to an extent, your familiarity with the site, the amount of subject matter expertise you have and the level of respect your peers have for you. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/7238/150097 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/7238/150097 In addition to that, it is possible to write well written, but highly specialized answers that gain few upvotes, or relatively simple answers that accrue large number of upvotes simply because it is a common question. In this sense, reputation is a measure of how 'valuable' your contribution to the site is, which is often, but not always aligned with how knowledgeable you are. There are other outliers too, like answers that get featured on Proggit or HN, but those are far less common. (It also used to be possible to gain large amount of reputation by simply being the first to reply to a poll with a popular answer, but those type of questions are no longer acceptable).

darkchasma 14y ago

Fools aside, this is a horrible idea. There are no experts here. There are loud people, and people with friends, but no community votes up the experts, only the eloquent, or the charismatic. Einstein wasn't president, JFK was. Some occasions, that's okay, but if I'm paying actual money, it certainly isn't.

dionidium 14y ago
You don't think the top users on SO are experts?
- pekk 14y ago
  The question is whether they are domain experts or SO experts
  - sklivvz1971 14y ago
    That's a false dichotomy.
saryant 14y ago
I've seen people ask questions about Scala on SO and get answers from Martin Odersky, the language's inventor. I'd say that counts as an expert.
- darkchasma 14y ago
  I agree 100%, and it's my point.