I guess most of you missed the point.  You're suggesting that I have to exploit the system to farm reputation to be able to start using the site productively, rather than start using the site productively to gain reputation.  The system is fundamentally flawed.  Yes, it works; of course it works.  Sort of.  But it works because so many people use it, NOT vice versa.  And so many people use it because it was the first to fill this niche, not because it's fundamentally well-designed.      This discussion aimed primarily at mathematical (and similar) Stack Exchange sites. What I am saying may not apply to others.    How will new users like myself be able to fully participate in Stack Exchange given its current rules and status quo?   Most of the features are locked until a significant reputation threshold is met (voting, commenting, ...) Pretty much all "easy" to "moderate" level difficulty questions have already been asked many times on here, which means:   New users will find it nearly impossible to gain reputation by asking questions, since all simple/common/general questions have already been asked.  This leaves very specific questions to be asked, which, even if they are very good questions, will only glean a few votes/responses. New users will also find it nearly impossible to gain reputation by answering questions, because the new questions that pop up will be very specific in nature (less likely to match our domain of proficiency), difficult to answer (more complicated, deeper), AND we have to compete with a very high volume of users to give an answer that ends up among the best answer(s).    As a result, I feel that Stack Exchange is dominated by a small community of users who built their reputation by "farming" easy questions when the question base of the site was relatively sparse (or even asking then answering their own questions during the site's inception). For the rest of us, it is pretty much an encyclopedia. We are cut off from almost all the interactive components unless we expend a great deal of effort, or perhaps find certain sub-sites to exploit for easy reputation farming (I'm not sure exactly how cross-site reputation functions, so I don't know if this is valid - either way, it's a waste of our time and intelligence).  @Comments saying the above implies I have nothing to contribute to Stack Exchange so the system is working perfectly:  Please think a little more carefully before berating and downvoting this discussion. I can have plenty to contribute just by writing comments to people's answers (often answering other people's questions in the comments to an answer).
121953
I just want to thumbs up a good answer, but I can't. I can't earn reputation because all conceivable simple questions have been asked and answered!  Is there a way to usefully earn reputation on a mature site for a non expert? Or am I forever to be locked out of giving thumbs up?
80725
I have posted different suggestions in the recent days, that many users didn't like. Although some are common practice in other forums, and some even if you don't agree are true (ie, new users get "bullied" by higher rep users many times).  I see that if users with a different way of seeing things, come and ask something here, and it gets downvoted, how is this different way of seeing things will ever affect this forum? I have been downvoted so much, I have each time less "voice" in here. I am not sure even if you can run risk of being banned here.  SO is a highly developed site, many things already implemented, it is hard to suggest something that everyone that has been here for long while will agree, something ground breaking. I suggested things that I as a responsible SO user, but with low reputation, I haven't asked many questions.  I think people on SO should be nicer to new users, I am not saying to allow them do whatever they want. Just be nicer.  So what should I do —    Quit in my attempt to participate in Meta because I will continue being downvoted?  just never propose any new idea, try to harvest Reputation by posting bugs, trying to answer things that are not too controversial so I don't get downvoted? Then when I finally have tons of reputation I can go and shutdown the reputation of new users that suggest new Ideas.   I think it is fine not to agree with me. But why do I lose reputation on meta because of a question that is proposing something new? If most people deem something not good for SO, well my question was useful. I mean my very downvoted ideas got attention, it was a useful discussion. The result was "we don't want that here", but it was useful, in the future other people won't need to ask the same. So is it really right to lose reputation because of that?  Edit:  I am adding this, because I think that by putting myself as example my point was a bit lost.  The FAQ says:     Are upvotes and downvotes different on meta?      Voting here works a bit differently from other Stack Exchange sites.   On Meta Stack Overflow, voting is often used to express agreement or   disagreement, not to point out a lack of quality or helpfulness.   Please don't be concerned if you receive downvotes – members of the   community may simply disagree with your bug, feature request, support   issue, or the nature of the discussion.   Some people in the comments have stated they don't even look at the reputation because of this very reason, which totally makes sense. But basically it means they are ignoring a part of the website's functionality, because it is not useful for that.  So does it make sense to lose reputation for something that people doesn't seem to consider?  I mean it is not the same to be downvoted on SO for posting "nonsense" and to be downvoted here for posting something others don't agree with. And I am not even talking about me, I am sure this has happened to everyone.  If it worried me that I am losing reputation, as it is I would have deleted the posts that are making me lose reputation. That is not my point.
96474
I know this seems like a good idea, but this far into the game you should be able to tell from network behavior that I'm not a spammer…  I had a compound question. I broke it up because breaking it up was possible—it probably isn't even necessary in that it wouldn't otherwise get closed. Now I doubt either of my questions will be easily answered, but it stinks when you want to run (irl) to have to wait on a question timer which means posting one at a later time. Can't we fight spammers more effectively in a different way?  You know it's my intent to ask the question (or you'd give me a captcha). You also know that historically my questions have been   Can't we find a way to make this not stupid?
119786
As I understand it, the concept of reputation is to give the user a sense of trust in the person answering the question.   On that note I find many users who's reputations are very high, but its from asking questions and getting up voted and not from providing other users with answers. At this point it is misleading unless you go to the users profile and investigate where their reputation is coming from.  Should there be a split between, answering reputation and asking a question reputation?  just throwing it out there.  EDIT:  i did not say to entirely get rid of reputation from asking questions.  I am merely suggesting a separation in the two. A reputation for answering and a reputation for asking good questions. This way you can differentiate quickly.  If its strictly for the system, then why display it after each users name?
23185
How should SO handle users who don't "maintain" their questions by selecting answers, or remarking newer/better answers as the chosen one?  Many questions...   Have no answer marked correct, even when one is plainly there Are not reviewed by the poster to select a new correct answer   I don't mind taking the time to answer questions, but don't see the point when I don't get "reputation" for doing so since no one reads those questions, and reputation seems to be the point of the site.  I think the "remind to accept an answer" feature is there now, since I just saw it when coming back.  I missed it the first time though.
12602
It seems that  was closed as not constructive.  While I could argue on the "not constructive" part, especially because it was already protected and made a CW, I'd be especially interested on what happened to my earned bounty.  I checked the reputation recalc page and it is gone. I am a little bit confused because I thought .
109126
There was a suggestion on uservoice - now down, that really illustrate the need to stop users from gaming the system by simply asking meaningless, ridiculous question after question to gain rep. We have users who have gamed the system enough to actually have moderation capabilities.   These users do not deserve the system's trust and instead cause nothing but problems.   My solution is to enforce a threshold for how many questions you may ask and receive reputation on based on your answers or other activities.  Please stop these people from becoming trusted members of the community. It will not be good for anyone.
50887
I am new to Stack  Exchange and I think it's very impressive.  One thing bothers me is that because it is so far down the line, I don't think beginners stand a chance of growing.  As time goes on, more and more questions are being answered and therefore if someone asks something with a really basic answer you can just comment. However, beginners can't comment until they have a reputation of 50. The only way they can build up is by answering questions. But if they answer a basic question long winded, they will be voted down because not so much effort was needed or because its already a duplicate and will lose the bit of reputation they have earned.  Can you tell me the future for beginners?
117862
If reputation points only reflect a user's knowledge in an area, why is it used as the sole basis to grant such privileges? How can you trust someone because he answered a number of questions correctly?   I've seen plenty of "high-reputation" users with very rude attitudes. Countless times closing legitimate questions, only because their buddy had a similar opinion. When is stackoverflow going to fix this flawed reputation system?
13968
I know Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are the owners or creators because I came by the site from reading their blogs.  Who else works for Stack Overflow in here?  Does Jon Skeet? There's also a fair number of 100k+ users now.  The answers from them are quite informative. It seems that to get that many points in such a short amount of time (the site's only been online for 2-3 years?), you would need to be spending quite a lot of time, regularly on here, so either they   Have a ton of spare time either at work or outside of work Are unemployed (seems unlikely given their breadth of knowledge) Work for Stack Overflow and their job is partially to post answers.   These guys seem too knowledgeable so reason 1 or reason 2 seem unlikely, so I suspect reason 3.
72443
Currently, the first time a user on the Stack Exchange network reaches 200 reputation, they get an extra 100 rep on that account and all their  accounts. I believe this should be documented as a privilege at 200 rep (along with the lessening of adverts).
82495
I've had a few concerns over a new form of &quot;spam&quot; - that is, through voting. A while back, I had seen some wild reputation increases to my account, amongst others, that seemingly felt weird - as I've barely participated in asking questions or providing answers. Earlier today, this sentiment was echoed by another user in chat:  and like 250 this month? it seems like someone is spam upvoting  This was another user that saw a 250 rep increase, but has been inactive for quite a while. For a site that hasn't seen more than 5 questions a day, that was really weird. To put things even more out of hand, it seems like each vote has been placed on a question.  I did some investigation of my own, and it seems like I've found a badge hunter. More of a... gold badge hunter. This user is among the top 3 voters of the site. Looking into this user's profile, this user only has under 200 rep, and has posted a single question, which was received differently. One thing caught my eye:  Votes all time              by type 581   up              535    question 1     down            47     answer   Each vote is an up vote (with the exception of one), and there are 535 up votes on questions. There are 535 questions in the entire site. Using reputation stats from user profiles, I came with the conclusion that these votes are...  Done within a short period of time. 5 question votes within a couple of minutes Done in [near] perfect chronological order: The earlier the vote, the earlier the question was asked. As if the user had gone through the list of questions in order, and placed an up vote on each one.   I see this as incredibly problematic. First:  It dangerously inflates reputation. Votes are not done based on their content, but simply for voting. Therefore, reputation loses it value as a way to measure expertise.  It's like serial up voting. Generally, when we hear the term &quot;serial up voting&quot;, we think of a voting ring, where one user continuously up votes another. This is negative for the targeted user. Well, here, we've got a voting ring with the site and this user. A user continuously up votes the site, causing negative damage for the site.  We mix good and bad content. Since low quality questions are a victim of the voting spree, many get meddled with the rest of &quot;good quality&quot; questions, despite being closed as off-topic, too broad, or whatever the reason. We can no longer reliably sort questions by quality with the very system that was designed to help us.   ... And the rest of voting fraud issues outlined in .  I've got a couple questions on this:  Is this comparable to serial voting? Should such votes be reversed? How should we determine whether or not to reverse them?  Should we stop this? Let it be? Is this really that big of a problem for sites? (I would argue that it's less of an issue for graduated sites that receive large amounts of content, but what about beta sites that rarely see more than a few questions a day)
99095
I've been lurking Stack Overflow whenever I had a problem for at least the last 2+ years. More times than not, I find my solution (or cobble one together) before I get frustrated enough to have the innernets help me with my specific custom problem.  Many times, the only commentary I would be able to add would be "thanks!" which really only wastes bits and bandwidth.  I understand implementing measures to keep the bots and SEO kids out, but sometimes it's a PITA to start participating in a community.  If you couldn't extract my question from the above rant (or title), this might be a little more clear:  Why do I require 15 reps to just up-vote something?  I feel like it's kinda silly.  Additionally, I noticed the quote off to the left:     We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed.   yet I have looked around here and haven't been able to find any justifiable explanation.
84998
I'm not a fan of the downvoting feature in general; frankly, I think it should be removed from all of the stackexchange sites.  Negative feedback leads to negative results. I recognize that the intent is not to provide a means of giving negative feedback, but that's what downvoting does. "The community's way of telling peers that their content can be improved" isn't an accurate description of downvoting: people who downvote other people with no explanation as to why (the usual practice) generally consider them not their peers, but their inferiors.   I fear that the downvoting feature panders to the worst aspects of human nature, to an extent that far outweighs any possible benefit that it can provide. I recognize that the intent of downvoting is to make a form of constructive criticism available, but that it fails to do. It simply says "this is bad" without any explanation. If someone really wants to offer constructive criticism, he can do so in the comments, or by closing questions with an explanation of how to bring them up to par. If he does that, it is that that has the value, not a downvote that might or might not go along with it.  I submit that the increasingly negative "elitist" reputation of many of the stackexchange sites (stackoverflow, the "bread and butter" site, in particular) is due more to unexplained downvotes than anything else: downvoting is (much) more often than not a way of telling new people that they aren't welcome in the club. This isn't conducive to growth.  It seems to me that the recently introduced admonishment to "be nice" to new members acknowledges the problem without really doing anything about it. It would be given more teeth if the downvoting feature were removed entirely — people have to give a lot more thought to a comment than a downvote decision. Furthermore, the (apparently many) "serial downvoters" who contribute little if anything else to the site would take themselves elsewhere.   Thoughts? What are the positive contributions (are there any?) that downvoting makes to the stackexchange sites?
23629
Most of the time, I don't need to ask questions to find the answers I am looking for. Because I just find all the answers on Stack Overflow. It is a huge resource of good tips, tricks and solutions. And by only looking around and searching (= ), my reputation stays at 1 of course.  But I also want to show my active participation by things like:   pointing out the answers that helped me out. somehow say "good answer, buddy, you saved my day today".   So no blablabla, just vote up the good stuff.  But I cannot. Frustrating.
106722
I am still new to this website but I am curious, what is the incentive for people to answer questions?  It seems like there is a much higher time effort of people to answering versus asking, which surprises me (from a pure utilitarian perspective).  For me the answer has boiled down to a few basic categories:   To gain reputation (this was novel at first and wore off after the first few days of using the site).  Also rep can always be gained by asking questions, with the benefit of also obtaining information. To give back.  I find myself doing this whenever I come to SO to search for/ask a question, and see something on the landing page I can answer. To correct the answer to an existing question.  This happens when I find the answer on SO and after trying it find it to be incomplete/not fully correct. Boredom.   I'm surprised how many people are willing to contribute so much time in answering questions with seemingly minimal reward.  Is it just that the community is that friendly and people are acting out of the goodness of their hearts?
70504
When we started Stack Overflow, we wanted to make sure that downvotes were more of a visual and psychological motivator than a punitive action. That's why    upvotes are +10 downvotes are -2, and cost the casting voter -1   However, recently, I've seen Marc Gravell and Jon Skeet both say similar things:     IMO, downvotes don't quite carry enough... -5 downvotes and +1 upvote (for sympathy) yields zero points overall; or it could even yield +10 points for a new user! I'd prefer to see, say, -4 points? -5 points?   I am starting to come around to this way of thinking. There are some users who ask a lot of questions that get downvoted heavily, but over time these users end up with a fairly sizable amount of reputation.  This doesn't feel right.  We are considering changing downvotes to -5, with the same -1 cost to the casting voter.  There really aren't that many downvotes in the system, so the net effect of this change would be to reduce rep growth for users who tend to get downvoted as much as they get upvoted. (Yes, I realize this is no panacea: over time, we'll still get rep inflation for marginal users based on sheer quantity; this is only one of several changes we are considering to help mitigate this.)  The other downside to this change, besides the obvious minor loss of rep for most users, is that it would force a global reputation recalc for every user. I think we're due for one of those anyway.