I see profiles of Jon Skeet, BalusC, Mysticial, etc. and realize that even if they were to go inactive, it'll take years to beat them in terms of total reputation points, because they'll hit the reputation points cap every single day, thanks to their popular old answers for years to come.
I do realize the answers totally deserve the rep they get; they are brilliant! But they do have to stop generating reputation points at some point to be fair, right?
Is it going to be hard to catch the top users? Yes, of course.
But should we even care? Unless you're into the gaming aspect of it, or you're just really obsessed with big numbers (note that I shouldn't be the one talking :P), it really doesn't make a difference whether someone has 30k or 300k.
Both a 30k and a 300k user know their way around the site very well. Both are trusted. The only difference is that the 300k user has probably been around a lot longer or simply has a lot more time on his/her hands.
In any case, I find that reputation points is a pretty poor indicator of expertise past the basics.
Personally, I find it pointless to try to reach the top. The repcap makes it almost impossible since it blocks anyone from "jumping" to the top in a short amount of time.
Out of curiosity, I made this query just to see how much it has affected me. And was mildly surprised that I was near the top.
To me, reputation points doesn't mean anything past, say 30k. If anything, I care more about delta-reputation points and vote/answer ratios. The last thing I want is a potential employer to see my profile and go,
"Hey, you spend all your time on Stack Overflow. How could you possibly get anything done?"
At 70k, in no way do I consider myself a "top" user. I'm never going to reach the top, nor do I care.
I use Stack Overflow because I enjoy it.
No. These answers are letting the users hit the reputation cap every day because they are upvoted every day. In other words, those answers continue to be of great value to the community, and there's no reason they should stop getting benefits (in the form of reputation) from them.
x days fetches?
Commented
Nov 16, 2012 at 7:01
As reputation is a measure of how much the community trusts you, it's logical to think people who've been around since the beginning deserve the rep they continue to gain.
Your reasoning could also be applied to popular tags, where rep is easier to gain due to the abundance of questions and expertise.
It's interesting to think how a normalized score could be introduced. Such as, your rep per tags you participate in perhaps taking in to account some current context.
I like the question, but I don't believe rep should have diminishing returns. The way I see it, the point of rep is not to make whoever earns it feel better. Instead, rep should be an indicator of the amount of good answers etc. that person has provided to the community. Placing diminishing returns makes no sense. If an increasing amount of people feel a given answer is valuable, then its impact should scale equally.
Keep in mind that rep points are just fancy unicorn magic bubbles with no real use, there is no point in farming it except for epeen. In fact, rep farming can induce worse answers/reviews and may even need to be stopped somehow. Nobody should be trying to 'get on top'.
Reputation points can be a function of time. New answers get 10 reputation points. Upvotes on old answers can be awarded fewer reputation points depending on their age, eventually converging to 0.
In other words, those answers continue to be of great value to the community, and there's no reason they should stop getting benefits (in the form of reputation) from them
The answers are of great value, so they should keep registering upvotes.
Questions that were answered in the initial days tend to benefit from the fact that they were "first in market" and have become cash-cows that cannot be replaced. A lot of these questions solved fundamental problems that a lot of people come across (and this will continue to happen in future). A lot of questions can be answered very well (or better) by new SOers, but because they have already been answered, they can't be answered again. Doesn't this make it unfair?
SO is more fun when everyone gets a fair chance to gain reputation points. I know reputation points don't matter a lot to many, but some do find it fun to gain a lot of reputation points!
