Old timer's luck vs Newcomer's work

Question

Once in a while I stumble on some question or answer with HUGE amount of upvotes (thousands for a question and multiple hundreds for an answer).

Here is the perfect example:

How to modify existing, unpushed commit messages?

What I found that most of such questions/answers are:

• Quite old (dating back to 2008, 2009, sometimes to 2010)
• Very often these super high voted answers could be googled in 10 seconds in some other resources (meaning that both the question and the answer aren't THAT valuable).

Another thing which I found that there are users (Old timer's) who answered literally one such question 5 years ago. And these users can get more reputation each week doing nothing than a newcomer (like me) answering couple of questions each several days.

So, I decided to investigate a little bit and wrote a query which calculates a ratio of Total reputation / number of posts (Answers + Questions). Here is it:

https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/revision/96666/115919/old-timers-luck

It's interesting to see how people got into 5k+ with 1 contribution to SO and there are even people with 10k+ (admin rights) with just 10 questions/answers.

Generally speaking, I have nothing against old reputation. However, a person doing nothing for 5 years and still beating me in daily reputation - kind of pisses me off :)

I just want to hear your opinion on this thing. Especially, it would be interesting to hear from other members who become active recently (I understand that for an admin with 30k reputation and thousands of answered questions it's not that big deal that somebody got 7k reputation from one answer).

P.S. 8 years passed since this post. I am old timer now and I can sit and accumulate points (and badges) without doing anything, while some new comers are fighting to get their first 1000 points. On top of that I stopped contributing to SO probably 4 years ago.

Answer 1

It's really no different than stock options in a startup company.

• In a startup, the earlier you are there, the bigger portion of the company shares you get;
• On Stack Overflow, the earlier you were here to snatch up all the common questions, the more passive rep you get in the long run.

Yes there's an effort imbalance. It was never entirely fair in real-life. And it definitely isn't entirely fair on Stack Overflow.

You are right that old users have a huge advantage in this rep-game. You basically learn to live with it. Try not to sweat too much about that number.

---

That said, the game isn't over for us.

Programming and (computers in general) is a fast changing field. Things get outdated very quickly and new things come in. If you stick around long enough, you may get lucky enough to snatch the next "common question" for the next technology.

Then you will be able to sit back and enjoy passive rep just like many of the old-timers before us.

Newcomers like us also have one advantage over the old-timers: we have much less to fear about the deletion of many highly-voted posts now that the rules have more or less stabilized.

Answer 2

Very often these super high voted answers could be googled in 10 seconds in some other resources (meaning that both the question and the answer aren't THAT valuable).

Stack Overflow is a beast in Google results, that's probably how the questions/answers got so many upvotes - because they turned up after a search and were useful. Sure they may be basic, but it doesn't mean they aren't valuable.

Generally speaking, I have nothing against old reputation. However, a person doing nothing for 5 years and still beating me in daily reputation - kind of pisses me off :)

Keep contributing, and you'll one day become an "old-timer" yourself and be gaining rep every day for doing nothing.

Don't think of Stack Overflow as a competition, think of it as a collaboration.

Answer 3

What counts are not the points but the road that you walk to reach them.

I would like to tell you that I have seen some users here that started after me and beat me, passed me and they are higher ranked than me, and they deserve it. They have given more help, more answers, and they worked a lot to help the community.

Second, the reputation is one metric, but there are more, like the many answers you have given, like the tags, the badges, the present on top of some language that you may be, and maybe you are in top 20 of some kind of language.

And now the question, what you do after your reputation reaches 30k with only ten questions?

I can tell you what you do before it reaches 30k with 2000 answers: you help people by giving answers, learning from other questions and improving your software too. Be part of a community that allows you to test your skills and your know how.

This is the road that I am talking about, this road that improves you as programmer, is not the numbers, is not the reputation, is not if you new or old.

Answer 4

My two most upvoted answers both took about five minutes to write.

Many answers that I spent ages on didn't get any rep at all - no upvotes, no acceptance. However, while the rep from the simple answers is great, I've gained a lot in thinking about how to answer the question.

In other words, if all you're getting out of StackOverflow is rep points, it's a waste of time - they're worthless. There's much more value to be had here.

Answer 5

I don't think you need to worry. If somebody gains moderator powers despite answering only a couple of ancient questions, they are hardly likely to be a major influence on the site. I think it's telling that the top of your list hasn't been seen since Feb 2010.

Anyway, StackExchange lets you measure your reputation per quarter. Perhaps that's a number you can take more pride in? That certainly can't be "cheated".

Answer 6

I think a decay function would be good. Not a fast one, perhaps an exponential decay one like e^(-x/5), which yields observable decays in a contributor's rep after 1.5-2.0 years or so.

This way, old, experienced contributors would be stimulated to keep on contributing to answers and questions as well, not just moderating.

Unfortunately, it may be well the case that the users who are in the position of deciding to do this are also the ones which would be negatively influenced by such a decision, so they won't want to lose their advantage over the others.

Oh well, that's how it works in real life too.

On the other hand, such a mechanism would encourage new users too, who would be less intimidated by such high reps.

e^(-x/5) is not that much, actually. A question/answer would decrease by approx. 0.8 in one year, and it could only be applied to questions or answers over a threshold, not to every contribution.

Answer 7

This topic has been discussed quite a few times, which can be seen by linked questions here and on Meta Stack Overflow as well. One thing isn't mentioned yet (as far as I can tell) and I can't really post it at the question which has been marked as the original question for this one: Diminishing returns / non-linear reputation from “great” answers, so here is my observation:

Back in 2008, we didn't have Hot Network Questions. We do have them now and they cause a lot of reputation gain across the network for new posts, up to the point that users complain about other users getting reputation (or at least privileges) faster than is good for the community. The effect is probably not that great for Stack Overflow (which has a net outflow of Hot Network Questions traffic and is even penalized for appearing on the list) but it is for sites like Worldbuilding and Role-Playing Games.

I'm not saying that this makes life fair; good old questions and answers will still be more rewarding, but at the very least it makes life a little bit fairer for new posts.