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I found that I am often answering questions from persons who have a 20 or less reputation. This isn't on purpose... most of the time, by the time I write out my answer and finished, I finally realize that the low reputation of the user makes the likelihood of them marking the question as answered low.

Is there a setting that allows me to ignore all users with 20 or less reputation?

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12
  • There is no current feature that would do this. The closest thing to it is the tag ignore feature. – American Luke May 31 '13 at 23:18
  • And other users read your answer and vote up just fine too. – Rup May 31 '13 at 23:24
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    This is discrimination, I would never support this feature. We all started low. – Richard J. Ross III May 31 '13 at 23:24
  • You don't. It's that simple. If you want, you can create a browser extension that will filter the questions. – user164207 May 31 '13 at 23:27
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    You could try your browser's Back button. </snark> – Andrew Barber Jun 1 '13 at 0:32
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    I find it quite funny how he did not mark an answer as accepted. – Ryan Jun 1 '13 at 1:25
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    @rtainc In all fairness, the question was only asked 2 hours ago and it doesn't seem as if the OP has returned to respond to anything yet. – WendiKidd Jun 1 '13 at 1:58
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    It would be funny if this guy got so much negative rep from this that his rep dropped below 20! – scrblnrd3 Jun 1 '13 at 13:22
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    Who upvoted this??! – American Luke Jun 2 '13 at 17:18
  • I think some people should read this: "meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9953/… – anon Jul 11 '13 at 22:38
  • I think people should also stop voting to close for different reasons. If the glove fits fine, but "too opinionated"... on Meta? The previous one was "off topic as doesn't seek discussion as outlined in..". Yes, it does exactly that. Please don't vote to close because you "disagree" with an idea or don't like it etc. Just downvote and move on... – James May 9 '15 at 21:26
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    @djangofan - Given your question is essentially requesting to ignore new users (under 20 rep) it seems pretty hypocritical that you commented "I think some people should read this" and linked to a post about "Could we please be a bit nicer to new users?". Ironically, the entire reason you got so many downvotes here is because people care about new users and did not care for you suggesting to ignore them. I know you meant no harm here, but try to consider others. You were new once, and imagine how you'd have felt if before you joined we had a function to ignore new users... – James May 10 '15 at 1:39
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No, there isn't, and neither should there be.

We all started out as newcomers to the site. Eventually you learned how the site worked, and along with that comes accepting answers. Is it true that some users are hit-and-run users who are going to ask one question, get an answer, and leave? Sure. But the point of the site isn't to help the user asking the question, or to earn rep for yourself. The point is to build a database of questions and answers that are going to help many people into the future. So if you're answering good questions and providing good answers, you're going to earn more than that +15 accept rep from upvotes when people stumble across your answer in the future.

If the most important thing to you is getting a checkmark by your answer and you think users with low rep aren't likely to accept, you have the free will to choose not to answer those questions. But I think you can take ten seconds to check their rep yourself in order to accomplish that. The dev team isn't going to code a feature to help you ignore what could be perfectly good questions.

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We must never forget where we came from. Discrimination against new users entirely and I mean entirely defeats the purpose of the site. So what if they never come back or even say thank you? If one anonymous person can solve even a trivial problem with an answer anywhere on the network, we have done our duty as users of the site.

The onus is on us, those with high rep and the moderators to set a good example to those new to the site and if everyone or even a sizable chunk of us were to do that, then those questions would go unanswered. Besides, I'm sure Jon Skeet won't use such a thing. Think about all the upvotes you're leaving at the table.

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8

As has been mentioned, if you are here to increase your rep, rather than helping answering questions or adding good questions that can attract helpful answers, I think you are missing the point of this site. It is not a competition who can have the highest rep, nor is it an exclusive professionals club (well, that is my understanding anyway).

Not everyone is a coding expert, some are just learning - like in my case, where I am teaching myself Android programming. Sure, you may see us low-rep users as having silly questions, but the question is not 'silly' to the member who posted it, and the answer is obviously not clear to the member.

Being rude to low rep users, and worse still, ignoring them borders on being elitist and definitely not community spirited.

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6

I spent quite a while as a "lurker" on the site to prepare myself to become someone who could provide valuable answers for the community. I did my due diligence in reading what other people asked, what other people answered, and, in general, what the community expected of its members. If I had been filtered out by members who thought that <20 rep users didn't have anything to say, I wouldn't have garnered the meek (compared to Jon Skeet) reputation that I have today. To lump everyone into a group that you would essentially classify as "inexperienced" or "unathoritative" would deprive the community as a whole.

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2

I personally really dislike this idea. However, in the interest of trying to get the Reversal badge, I made a nice and simple user script:

var questions = document.getElementsByClassName('question-summary');

for(var i = 0; i < questions.length; i++)
{
    var rep = questions[i].getElementsByClassName('reputation-score')[0].innerText.replace(/,/g, '');
    if(rep.indexOf('k') === -1 && parseInt(rep) < 20)
        questions[i].style.display = 'none';
}

You can get it over at Stack Apps: https://stackapps.com/questions/4131/hide-low-rep-questions

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4
  • How does hiding questions from users with low rep help you get the Reversal badge? – WendiKidd Jun 1 '13 at 1:40
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    @WendiKidd It doesn't. I was referring to this question and answer. – Danny Beckett Jun 1 '13 at 2:11
  • Noooo -1 because 1. We don't want this to exist! 2. Don't answer just to get a badge... That's gaming the system – Doorknob Jun 1 '13 at 12:03
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    @Doorknob I'd imagine you'd have to "game the system" somehow to get Reversal... – Danny Beckett Jun 1 '13 at 13:51

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