How does a new user begin using Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange?

Question

As a new user, I find it impossible to contribute to the community or to even begin contributing. I know why the reputation system is in place and I respect it, but at the same time it is too hard on new users.

It started with me wanting to upvote a question...

"Vote Up requires 15 reputation"

Just to appreciate a good question that helped me I need 15 rep? OK..., so I find out how I can get reputation points. More or less, I need to ask a question for +5 and add an answer for +10. I don't have any questions at the moment and I don't want to spam a random question, but I did happen to have a slightly different answer to the earlier question that I wanted to upvote. So I try to answer...

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Now... I know this doesn't apply to every question, but at the same time, this means I'm forced to answer yet another question, and I don't want to go around looking for random questions and spam irrelevant answers... Now I'm stuck. So I try to talk to some other users in the chat rooms about how to go about getting reputation points and how they first started. I entered into a "casual chat room".

You must have 20 reputation on Meta Stack Overflow to talk here.

Yes... I can understand why this is enforced, because we don't want new users to spam chat rooms, but all I wanted to do was ask for help. So I can't even talk to anyone about my newbie problems. So okay, I'll just settle for upvoting comments in the question that helped me. I don't see an upvote hover-over button so I can't even do that.

So now I'm stuck at 1 reputation point, unable to cross that 15 rep barrier, and even after posting this question I'll only have 6 rep points and still unable to do anything, and I'll be forced to look for questions to answer. Yes, I should be contributing to the community, but I shouldn't need to begin answering or making questions to upvote questions and answers. This only spurs more spam/irrelevant answers if anything.

Very, very, very new-user unfriendly.

Answer 1

I find it impossible to contribute to the community or to even begin contributing.

Yes, it is intentionally difficult for new users to participate in parts of the site we do not want new users participating in.

You are certainly welcome to ask and answer questions - which is the primary focus of the site - and you are certainly welcome to read questions and answers and take advantage of all the knowledge this site has to offer. Indeed, this is the best way to familiarize yourself with how to formulate questions and answers that are suitable for this site.

We restrict voting, commenting, and chatting to users who have spent some time participating in the primary goal - questions and answers. We find, in fact, that encouraging new users to participate in the main activity first, they become more aware of the community and its standards and, for lack of a better term, flavor of discussion, before they risk offending the community by voting, commenting, or chatting in a manner that goes against the grain.

Further, by forcing new users into a chute that allows only a certain type of interaction with the site we push the idea and concept that this is first, and foremost, a question and answer site. The primary participation for the entire community is, and should be, adding questions and answers.

Everything else - and I mean everything - exists solely to support asking questions and getting answers. These other aspects of the system are not side quests, or alternate games - they are only here to make Q&A better.

Now - as to seeming user unfriendly.

The reality is that if a new user finds this forced focus on Q&A uncomfortable then they will likely find the site uncomfortable in the long run and we want to weed out people who aren't here for asking and answering questions.

Answer 2

A second way that many people take is to find a site within the StackExchange network that is a bit friendlier than Stack Overflow, where reputation comes easier. Once you get 200 reputation on any single SE site, then all of your SE sites get a 100 reputation bonus. And then you aren't stuck at the limited reputation levels.

Answer 3

We need those restrictions to prevent abuse. So how do you get around?

You can go through some questions and see if they need improvement. You can edit them. Correct grammar, spelling, formatting. It's called a suggested edit. (But please don't make edits that are too minor.)

If an edit of yours gets approved you get 2 rep points. Do this with 7 posts and you have 15 rep.

Answer 4

The main purpose of Stack Exchange is to provide excellent answers to questions of a wide range of topics (depending on which Stack Exchange site you're on). Therefore, the best thing you can do is provide answers. "I don't want to go looking for questions to answer" is not the attitude promoted here. Personally, I find it invigorating to check SO every hour or so and see if there are new questions in my area of expertise, because at one time I was a n00b with limited skill and (at the time) didn't have resources like SO to answer my questions.

So, I guess the answer you may or may not want to hear is; keep answering questions! Eventually you'll have the points necessary to perform any function you want.

Answer 5

The spam protection is very important. See for example PrimeFaces forum, which is flooding in spam from hydra-accounts (you delete one, two new are registered).

It should not be a problem to a new user. It wasn't a problem to me and my collegues. Your use case is a bit unusual. We began reading Stack Overflow questions and answer, being redirected from Google Search. We only created an account when we had a question to ask. 15 reputation is only 3 upvotes on the question, and when you provide some answer (even to your own question) the reputation would come very quickly.

Disclaimer: I don't have any statistics. I just haven't seen anyone in a workspace who would register only to upvote questions or answers. They register first when they have a question to ask.

Answer 6

It all starts with a click...

Usually new users start to use Stack Overflow by simply clicking a link from Google Search and marveling at the fact that not only was their situation reproduced, but a solution which worked and had community consensus was present.

The process of making those situations available while ensuring that content quality remains as high as possible involves some protection. Some of these protections include requiring users to become accustomed to the dynamics of how the Stack Exchange network works before contributing to issues with which there is already a very strong consensus.

It is encouraging to hear that an answer here helped you. Sorry that you feel like it is hard on new users, but it isn't meant to be a deterrent to the user. It is merely an attempt to protect content quality and all of the hard work so many users in the community have already put in.

If you wish to attain reputation, ask a unique question, post a working/useful answer, or suggest edits. I certainly haven't ever gotten reputation points without doing one of those three things.

Answer 7

As it has already been said, the limits are here for protecting against spam and contribute by providing good answers is the best way if you do not have good questions.

You have to see for example the advanced search tips to try to find the best unanswered questions and the following is one of the query I often put in the search box:

[java] is:question answers:0 closed:no score:2-3

After you can tune it to search negatively voted question (some are even good to answer, even silly) or putting more tags e.g

[spring] [java] [jms] is:question answers:0 closed:no

After you can sort by the most recent (more probability the OP will vote or accept your answer) and to choose the question with bounties (Questions -> featured tab, and add a [tag] in the search box if necessary).

In the beginning I just started with few questions (which were not already asked) I had about by daily work and trying to provide answer to the same subject and I got more than 200 rep quite easily as well by providing an accepted answer to a bounty question.

Answer 8

Just saying (since apparently I can actually post an answer here, and that's about it). This problem is literally why I've never actually provided any useful information on any Stack Exchange despite having had an account for years. Every time I run across a location where I actually have something useful to say, I'm blocked from doing so.

Undoubtably this will be deleted and/or cost me the 1 reputation I have. I don't care, because my experience has always been that I'm already unable to contribute anything useful anywhere on Stack Exchange.

Answer 9

I have about the same problem. I rarely have a question that wouldn't be a duplicate since I rarely wind up here unless Google sends me. It's stressed that we're not to ask duplicate questions, so I'm answering you instead, as I was going to ask this myself and, of course, found it would be a duplicate.

I get the whole "It's supposed to be a Q&A site" mentality. It's good to have quality control in place to prevent spam and multi-profile users upvoting more than once. But there should be some sort of introductory something to get users over the upvote hurdle, at least—even if it's some tutorial that's mind-numbing and painful to go through or points for reading FAQ pages. Something like that would stop the spammers and still get you to where you could at least upvote the answer you think is best for a question. And it would guide users toward a unified mindset and culture, something that the reputation system is intended to encourage.

The idea of editing for early points seems like a good way to start, but the Help Center says, "Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged." I'm a pedant and check spelling and grammar in everything I read. Edits should be easy. So at what point do spelling/grammar edits become non-trivial? To me, it's non-trivial to move, insert, or remove a comma—see Oscar Wilde. Or to correct improvment to improvement or similar single-character changes. The answers I've found on the subject of edit triviality tend to be one person saying, "A few characters is too trivial to matter, so you shouldn't submit so small an edit." followed by someone else saying, "The difference between e=mc^2 and e=mc^3 is a significant change and should be allowed as an edit."

So I guess the idea is that if you didn't get to the site early enough and aren't more clever than the people who showed up before you did, your presence isn't wanted. If you are more clever, keep your head down; the powers that be can downvote and delete you until you lose enough reputation to be silenced. This is a company town, after all. That's a feature, not a bug. It makes it so that this site, which touts itself as, first and foremost, a quality Q&A site, at least won't have spam or poor answers because you have to be a user in good standing to participate in the process. What's that? You can answer a question without being a member? Hmm. Well, at least they can't comment.