The surest way to gain lots of reputation on Stack Overflow- ask questions [duplicate]

Question

Gaining reputation from answering on Stack Overflow is getting increasingly difficult. There are many talented users to answer most questions within minutes, providing good enough answers immediately and editing in fuller answers within a very short time. Sometimes I feel like gaining reputation is somewhat of a race. However, I mean this in a good sense - it's a fun race, and it's great to have answers to most questions supplied most quickly.

But it saddens me to see how easily reputation can be gained by just asking questions. I know this has been discussed here on Meta Stack Overflow several times, but I want to highlight a pattern. Take a look at the Hottest Questions This Week (I tend to scan through this list on weekends). I don't want to point fingers, but many questions there have already been asked multiple times before. Stack Overflow veterans surely scan with their eyes, nodding - been there - over most of them. And yet, these questions gain lots of reputation. Some get closed in a couple of hours, but still manage to gain many votes until then.

This isn't a good situation, IMHO. Many members on Stack Overflow brandish high reputations and when you enter their profile it's a few 100s of questions, 3 downvoted answers on some semi-subjective topic, and nothing more. Is this the 4K user employers would like to hire based on high Stack Overflow reputation?

Perhaps to prove this, it's worthwhile to make an experiment - a user that asks semi-subjective questions over and over again, on topics which haven't been discussed in the past week or so. I have a feeling this can show some nice results, reputation-wise.

I know there are open issues on User Voice on this issue, but is someone planning to do anything about it? IMHO too much reputation is gained by asking questions, it is blatantly obvious, and it makes Stack Overflow a less fun place to be - as it partially invalidates the whole reputation system.

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Why less fun? Consider this scenario:

Bob: So are you knowledgeable in programming?

Alice: Yeah, I have a Stack Overflow reputation of 8K!

Bob: Eh, I knew people get to such reputations just for asking hundreds of repeating questions there. So that doesn't count. Any other proof of your expertness?

Sounds surreal? I disagree. As an employer interviewing people quite often, such a scenario is real for me. I just value Stack Overflow reputation less because of this, period. Stack Overflow's administrators have to decide what they want out of it. Is it just a website for getting your questions answered? Great - it's a great one, indeed. But it appears they want to make something more, connecting to Careers, meaning reputation to actually be real. In such a case, allowing reputation farming from repeated questions is a self-defeating strategy.

Answer 1

I (Jeff Atwood) eventually came to agree with the premise of this question, which is that too much rep is generated from questions:

• Should the weight of question upvotes be reduced?
• Important Reputation Rule Changes

Answer 2

I've got a crazy idea: rather than just making stuff up, let's look at the data!

• 5,954,332 actual rep generated from ~439k questions

• 21,968,671 actual rep generated from ~1.4m answers

Almost 4× as much reputation has been generated by answers, so I take issue with your statement

… how easily rep can be gained by just asking questions …

The data certainly doesn't agree.

Since there were requests for per-post averages, here you go -- the second number excludes community wiki questions and answers.

Average question score

1.47, 1.33

Average answer score

1.96, 1.69

The median question and answer scores are 1 in all cases.

Many members on SO brandish high reps and when you enter their profile it's a few 100s of questions, 3 downvoted answers on some semi-subjective topic, and nothing more

"Many" members? really?

Total users with reputation > 4000

1494

Total users with reputation > 4000 who have asked more than 50 questions

250

Total users with reputation > 4000 who have asked more than 100 questions

85

Total users with reputation > 4000 who have asked more than 200 questions

28

For all users with > 4000 reputation:

questions (avg, median)

31.1, 14

answers (avg, median)

351.7, 246

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Edit:

_{In honor of Stack Overflow users' combined reputation passing one billion last month, and approaching ten million users, I thought it would be interesting to revisit Jeff's stats from 8½ years ago.}

_{To compare current stats to when Jeff posted the answer above, Stack Overflow had:}

                   2009-ish        2018-ish
Users         ~100 thousand     ~10 million   ←  97.4× increase 😮 
Combined Rep    ~30 million      ~1 billion   ←  36.4× increase

Updated stats:

• 6 million 165 million reputation generated from ~439k ~15 million questions
• 22 million 843 million reputation generated from ~1.4m answers ~25 million

Almost 4× Over 5× as much reputation has been generated by answers.

Per-post average scores (second number excludes community wiki Q&A's):

• Average question score: 1.47, 1.33 1.97, 1.95
• Average answer score: 1.96, 1.69 2.74, 2.69

The median question and answer scores are still 1 in all cases.

Totals for users with reputation > 4000 ...

• ...number of users >= 4000 rep 1494 39044 (26× increase over 2010 )
• ...who have asked more than 50 questions 250 9532 (38×)
• ...who have asked more than 100 questions 85 2993 (35×)
• ...who have asked more than 200 questions 28 1955 (70×)
• ...rep from questions (avg, median) 31.1, 14 51.9, 22
• ...rep from answers (avg, median) 351.7, 246 312.5, 188

A couple of related charts:

Answer 3

Shore, there is always Gold. But they are edge cases; they must have elephant skin because almost 50% of the votes they get are downvotes. Besides, everybody knows they are Jon and Marcs sock puppet accounts.

The surest way to gain lots of reputation points on Stack Overflow:

1. Answer lots of questions (and be the first to answer them)
2. Answer them well
3. Rinse and repeat

More controversial ways:

1. Answer lots of questions on lucrative tags (subjective, source control, homework)
2. Answer them well
3. Rinse and repeat

Proof:

select 
    case when ParentId is null then 'Question' else 'Answer' end as [Type],  
    COUNT(*), 
    (SUM(Score) / (COUNT(*) + 0.0))
    from Posts
    where CommunityOwnedDate is null and ClosedDate is null
group by case when ParentId is null then 'Question' else 'Answer' end

           Count     Rep       Rep/Post
Answers:   1194295   2040522    1.71
Question:   380461    529778    1.39

Conclusion

Most reputation points are gained from answers; you are likely to get more reputation from answering.

The statistics exclude closed and community wiki questions and answers (which when included only mean more people get more reputation points on average).

Answer 4

Bob: So are you knowledgeable in programming?

Alice: Yeah, I have a Stack Overflow reputation of 8K!

Bob: Eh, I knew people get to such reputations just for asking hundreds of repeating questions there. So that doesn't count. Any other proof of your expertness?

Alice: My reputation comes mainly from answering questions. Take a look at my StackOverflow profile if you don't believe me.

(At least I would say that if I where in the same situation)

Answer 5

Maybe rewarding asking questions was more important in the beginning, to attract users (and useful questions) to the site? Now, however, I'm not that sure that rewarding questioners is that important anymore. Their "reward" should be getting an answer; wouldn't that be enough?

At least re-balancing the question/answer reputation gain should be considered.

Answer 6

Early on, as Teddy says, it seems to me questions have more inherent value than they do for a large site. The larger the pool of existing questions, the greater the proportion of new ones that are not new knowledge or threads. That means new questions have a bit less value on average; it also means there is new value in coordination, consolidation, and organization of existing questions.

A few tangential responses:

• Consider changing the weight given to posting questions, posting answers, rearranging/fixing metadata, etc. based on what is most in demand. This could be a slow-changing way of aggregating input from thousands of community members in simple metrics that let everyone see what is being most appreciated.

• There's value in direct manipulation of the question namespace. The close/delete mechanism isn't a good one for many 'repeat' questions -- the new variant may have a few twists not covered before; it may get an answer better than one offered before; and the questioner may have been thinking about the question with different jargon, making it hard for him/her to find the original discussion. So change the system to make it possible for compulsive organizers and classifiers to do something more than add or unify tags across similar questions. Let them group questions together, directly merging them or redirecting one to another. Make it possible for someone to create an omnibus question that will turn up in the same searchable namespace, which can point to a score of related questions and provide context that lets a reader figure out which one pertains to what's on their mind.

• Examples in current practice: Stack Overflow questions can be closed with "migrated to ([email protected])". Support similar closures as "merged with (question)", "redirected to (question)", "disambiguated via (omnibus question)".

Answer 7

Bob: Eh, I knew people get to such reps just for asking hundreds of repeating questions there. So that doesn't count. Any other proof of your expertness?

Me: So, you're going to make an assumption about a specific scenario based on a belief about a general practice, when you could look it up in under 30 seconds?

Bob: Yes.

Me: Never mind, I don't think I'm interested in working for you.

Answer 8

This is an incomplete argument.

First, it's mostly just trying to point out that the OP may be have been slightly loose with his facts, or perhaps a bit hyperbolic. I see just one assertion. This is the assertion that "the data certainly doesn't agree" with the observation of "how easily rep can be gained by just asking questions." But the data provided doesn't argue that. All the data provided shows is that most people are not earning reputation points this way. A first approximation to addressing the statement that "rep can [easily] be gained by just asking questions" is to compare average reputations points earned per question to average reputation points earned per answer. A second approximation would account for the effort differences between the two.

The data currently shows that the ratio is 1.69 points per answer versus 1.33 points per question.

I think that the gap between these two numbers should be significantly larger. Answering questions requires more effort, knowledge and time than asking questions. How much more is a difficult question. But the current ratio shows that answers are currently worth 27% more than questions. This seems far too small given the effort, knowledge and time required to answer questions is certainly 27% more than that required to ask questions. All you need to ask a question is a the ability to fog a mirror, an internet connection, and a vague semblance of the right words to incant. But to answer a question generally requires knowledge and experience as well as time. The better answerers likely have a breadth of knowledge or a depth of knowledge gained from years of experience and study. Only providing answerers with 27% extra compensation seems far too little.

Second, what is the reason for giving points for upvotes on questions? Question posers already have enough incentive to post (they often have a legitimate question that they want answered). I always thought the intent of reputation points was a signal of how much you are trusted by the community; awarding points for asking questions does not support this.

One idea I would support is awarding reputation points for questions that receive a lot of upvotes (obviously "a lot" needs to be specified). This would help bring the ratio of points per answer to points per question closer to a more meaningful number. As it stands, the ratio of 1.69 per answer versus 1.33 per question given the level of effort required for the former over the latter is too small.

Answer 9

Here's another proof of concept. Stellar 12.7K rating from 655 questions and 44 answers.

Answer 10

I do not know if the amount of rep available from asking questions is "too much".

I do not even know if the amount of rep available from asking a question which has already been asked is too much.

However obviously there is some value in asking questions.

And I even think that there is some value to asking repeated questions -- though, again, it's not clear how much value, and there probably is some kind of logarithmic falloff here, in "conceptual value" even if that has not been implemented for "actual rep".

One advantage of repeated questions is that repeated questions can be easier to find than lone questions, and frequently asked questions tend to be asked frequently for good reasons. Another advantage is that repeated questions tend to shed noise that can accumulate on a page that presents a single instance of the question.

And, of course, their are downsides and costs also. A frequently asked question might not be a frequently answered question and a frequently answered question might not have the really good answer on all of its instances. And then there's the sheer annoyance factor. And no one in their right mind likes spam.

(Then again reputation can never be the only criteria used here, or reputation will stop mattering to people.)

Answer 11

As long as the questions are closed, and eventually deleted, then when the rep is recalculated this 'spurious' rep will disappear.

Therefore the system is ultimately self-healing. If you believe a particular user has been abusing this aspect of the system, flag one of their posts for moderator attention, and explain briefly.

They may delete the closed questions and push a rep-recalc to bring the user back to where they should be.

Beyond that - does it really matter that someone has more rep than they should? Yes, they are able to edit things, maybe close things, and perhaps they've attained 10k and can use the tools - but if they aren't abusing these powers, who does it really harm?

Reputation is meant to encourage participation. It's now being used for more than this, but I don't see the side effects being terrible - it's not a zero sum game where rep they gain means rep you lose.

Answer 12

I do believe handling questions and answers in a different way is going to add too much complexity.

One of the things I liked in SO's reputation system in the first place is it's simplicity. Terrible questions can be upvoted, but good ones are being too. I don't think we should try to address all these "edge" cases. I prefer to just let them be exceptions instead of creating more and more condition layers about reputation.

And we need questions in this place to exist. The "rewards" to ask or answer somthing IMHO have to be the same, so we can at least try to have a balance here between questions/answers.

Answer 13

OK, so you can't upvote your own answers with sock-puppet accounts, because that will be detected. However, you can potentially create a sock-puppet to conveniently "plant" questions that you have great answers prepared to. Then within a minute of the question being posted you give your great answer.

Sit back and wait for the plus votes and everyone to think what a genius you are. Of course if you can login remotely to another computer you can post the question and answer from two unrelated IP addresses.

(Waits for the downvotes to come pouring in...)

Answer 14

A solution to this problem (which I even doubt exists) is to make a feature where people with enough reputation can take away the reputations generated by a question. This way, even if the person generates a lot of reps before someone can get to it, the reps can still be revoked. (The number of reps to get this privilege would have to be high though.)