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Interestingly, I find that a lot of the questions on Stack Overflow are from such noobs that I'd have to spend time explaining how to program before getting to

Interestingly, I find that a lot of the questions on Stack Overflow are from such noobs that I'd have to spend time explaining how to program before getting to their actual question. This disuades me from participating, as it's hard to find the questions from programmers who I could help. As a professional, if I can't find a way to contribute my expertise in a timely and efficient way, then I'll get on with something interesting and more lucrative. Which is a shame, because there is a lot of useful stuff on SO, and I'd like to contribute at a high level, but I'm not willing to put in 2 hours a day to find the 1 or 2 questions that would be worth the time. I'm an older programmer, and this may be one explanation of why older programmers answers on SO aren't as useful - the good ones are not the ones answering questions! This is just an anecdote, but one that certainly applies to me

msoad 13y ago
The score in StackOverflow is meaningless without looking at profile of an individual and see what question they ask or how is their level of knowledge in their answers. Spending time to contribute to StackOverflow is not necessary a bad behavior. Programmers can meet challenges that they might have in feature and get ready for them. I personally answer to questions that have no answer or not correct answer when I google for them but finally I've solved myself. I even googled and reached to my own answers!
dasil003 13y ago
Why do you think you have to put in 2 hours a day to find a good question to answer? I usually end up on SO because I was searching for something, and I see interesting questions often enough through serendipity. I don't think I've ever spent a whole hour on SO.