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Looking at Jon Skeet's profile he has an enormous lead in reputation over number 2.

Given the huge amount of rep that he gets from up votes on existing answers and that he either hits or exceeds the daily reputation cap every day I am drawn to the conclusion that it is possible for him to maintain the number 1 position forever whilst never answering another question.

What do you think? Can anyone disprove my theory?

UPDATE:

Ok, the challenge is given. Once this post is eligible for bounty I'm going to put as much bounty as I can on this question and award it to whoever can give the best answer for when Jon Skeet would be overtaken if he stopped answering questions. I know you all love a challenge :)

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  • 59
    Jon Skeet doesn't answer questions. Questions answer Jon Skeet. Whut?
    – Cole Tobin
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:18
  • 10
    Without new answers, accepts are limited to the existing pool. After a while (all answers accepted), Jon would be capped at 200/day. Another awesome user with new answers could then overtake with upvote rep+accepts to get a higher rep/day rate. (Bounties not taken into account.)
    – Mat
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:19
  • 3
    I think I saw that he would have to answer question around the 75th century
    – user234239
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:19
  • 4
    I would consider adding a big bounty to award to someone who did some detailed analysis of this re the other top-five users. ;)
    – Andrew Barber
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:22
  • 2
    Oblig: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts
    – Oded
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:22
  • 6
    The 2nd place all-time user has only gained about 209 reputation per day for the past year. If he continues at that pace and Jon Skeet slows down to only 200 reputation per day, it will take over 43 years to catch him.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:28
  • 34
    OMG just noticed the jon-skeet tag?!
    – user234239
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:31
  • 39
    I think it would be neat if M. Skeet stopped using his current account and started a fresh one, just to see how long it would take him to catch himself.
    – ale
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:34
  • 4
    The analysis is somewhat complicated by the fact that Jon Skeet answers (while obviously excellent) get extra attention due to "the legend of Skeet", if he was no longer on the site the ledged might fade
    – Richard Tingle
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:36
  • 3
    There is a tag called Jon Skeet!? OMG! Soon enough people will start tagging questions with that...
    – Sid
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:48
  • 2
    Probably depends how much effort the competition wants to put into it. Currently there are 388 bounty questions. That is a minimum of 20K additional rep up for grabs. possibly much more. If one of the top answers started focusing on those, even answering questions outside their comfort zone, they could likely narrow the gap much quicker.
    – Martin Smith
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:56
  • 26
    I have this insane fantasy that Jon Skeet will answer this question himself and win the Bounty.
    – RBarryYoung
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:45
  • 11
    In what magical universe can a question be marked as a duplicate of a closed question with no accepted answer?
    – jmac
    Sep 26, 2013 at 0:12
  • 3
    I'm very disappointed to see that this question was closed and on very arbitrary grounds. Even though it was light hearted and not "on topic" I thought it was OK to ask these sort of questions on Meta :(
    – MikeD
    Sep 26, 2013 at 11:02
  • 2
    @MikeD Just got it reopened ;)
    – Josh Crozier
    Dec 18, 2013 at 20:57

5 Answers 5

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2020 Update:

It looks like the answer may end up being "Just under a decade". At the rate he's currently going, Gordon Linoff will overtake Jon around the end of February 2023, 9.5 years after this question was asked.

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  • 3
    Thanks Zak. That is really interesting. I sometimes wonder if the points system used by stack overflow causes issues with demotivation of new contributors. In some respects it reminds me of a pyramid scheme where the early participants get all the benefits and the rest of the contributors are just left with the crumbs :)
    – MikeD
    Dec 30, 2015 at 20:23
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    @MikeD I don't think so. The point of a pyramid scheme is that you earn exponentially more purely for being in early. Sure, old, classic, highly-upvoted posts probably get a few more votes than an equally worthy new post, but not much more. Regardless, getting to the top (and staying there) requires a huge amount of contribution, so I'd say they deserve it. For the people in my post, they average 2 or 3 new answers every single day. Only a handful of SO users rep-capped every day for the past year, so there's still plenty of room for a new, equivalent, user to make their mark.
    – Kaz
    Jan 3, 2016 at 7:11
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    So when I look at the first page of all time users on stack overflow they have all been members for more than 6 years except 3. Gordon Linoff deserves a mention for having made it to page 1 in just under 4 years. Most of them have been members since the beta. Has Jon Skeet earned "exponentially more purely for being in early"? If he was to join today and answer questions in the same wonderful way would he be able to overtake existing users or would his answers languish below the accepted answers? I don't know for sure but it's interesting to think about :)
    – MikeD
    Jan 8, 2016 at 11:56
  • I've marked your question as the accepted answer because of your analysis using actual data for the last year. I agree with you that this gives a more accurate picture.
    – MikeD
    Jan 8, 2016 at 12:00
  • The only real barrier to new users is the daily rep cap. Taking the lowest 11 users on the front page (ignored Gordon because he's a special case): They average about 150 rep/day at present. (with the lowest being ~80). This is an obvious barrier, but not insurmountable. And, it could be argued, if users are on the front page because of many years of answering questions, isn't it appropriate that a new user would have to demonstrate a commensurate level (and period) of contribution to join them?
    – Kaz
    Jan 8, 2016 at 12:49
  • 2
    I used to gain 125k a year, and other long-inactive accounts have shown that rep-capping on weekends doesn't always happen. 60 - 65k average a year over the next decade is a realistic estimate, I'd say. At those rates I could do it in 8. But that'd require me giving up my job and moderator position to get back to that level of activity...
    – Martijn Pieters
    Mar 18, 2016 at 20:03
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Jon can't exceed the daily gap without a large number of accepted answers (which, along with bounties, are the only things that don't count towards the gap). To get accept marks, you'll have to keep on contributing.

If Jon were to stop answering, he would still gain 200 points every day for the foreseeable future, but other users who continue to gain accept marks would likely overtake him at some point not that far in the future.

Bottom line: Jon couldn't be #1 with the "interest" coming from his past contributions alone - I'm sure most of the top 10 users would gain 200 rep every day without any activity. He's #1 simply because of an insane amount of continued activity that manages to gain many many accept marks.

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  • 1
    Yup; I can definitely see any of the top five catching up to him if he just stopped today. When? Who knows... but they would.
    – Andrew Barber
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:21
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    Perhaps, but this would happen when a 64-bit unix timestamp can no longer represent time. Jon Skeet is absolute.
    – Madara's Ghost
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:21
  • then again, when Jon thinks of a post, isn't that automatically accepted?
    – user234239
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:22
  • I'm going to have to dig into the stats now and try to work out what the average excess is over the daily cap and then determine how long it would take him to catch up. I reckon he could have at least a few years off and still be ok :)
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:22
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    @UV-D I guess... and also, I suspect if he left, his account would just go on answering for him, anyway.
    – Andrew Barber
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:22
  • @MikeD I don't think it would be years. Or at least not many. Would be an interesting exercise to find out!
    – Pekka
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:24
  • Jon wakes up in the morning, SE accepts; Jon eats his breakfast or absorbs nutrients, SE accepts...
    – user234239
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:24
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    I was gonna point to Alex Martelli as one such example (didn't log in for years and was still hitting the rep cap regularly), only to find out he has logged in a few weeks ago.
    – Oded
    Sep 25, 2013 at 14:26
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    I disagee with your bottom line. Having looked into this a little more now I am pretty sure that Jon Skeet could continue to be number one for quite a few years with no continued activity. It is a testament to Jon Skeet's insane amount of activity that his lead is as big as it is.
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:37
  • @MikeD This answer is attempting to come up with a minimum possible value, given a close to best case scenario. It specifically states that the more likely time would be noticeably longer.
    – Servy
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:40
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    @MikeD looking at the math, PearsonArtPhoto's estimate of 3 years below sounds realistic. I agree that Jon isn't going to stop gaining 200/day even without activity anytime soon, if ever.
    – Pekka
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:43
  • @Servy Oops. You are right. I'm guilty of skim reading.
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:45
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    @Oded He may have logged in a few weeks ago, but his most recent post as in October of 2010, so still a good example.
    – ughoavgfhw
    Sep 25, 2013 at 16:33
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    "I'm sure most of the top 10 users would gain 200 rep every day without any activity." Nope. I wouldn't. Not during the week-end.
    – VonC
    Sep 27, 2013 at 7:12
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This math is pretty straightforward. At the moment I write this, Jon has 606,882 rep and #2 has 463,940 - a gap of about 150,000 rep. He gets 200-400 rep a day, the rep cap plus accepts. (Other answers have said 10K a month, which is roughly 300 a day.) Assume, for the fastest possible catchup:

  • Jon's accepts stop dead when he stops posting answers
  • User #2 gets a steady diet of 400-rep days, which are Jon's current best days

Neither of these assumptions is strictly correct and they both err in the direction of a faster catchup.

The number of days till catchup will be 150,000 / 200 (the rep delta as #2 gains) which is 750 days, or about two years. Minimum. In practice it would be longer, but not centuries. For example if #2 got an average of 100 over the rep cap (or 100 over Jon if you want to imagine him still getting accepts) then it would take four years instead of two. The only thing that would make it take less time is if Jon stopped hitting the rep cap and started earning less than 200 rep/day. With almost 30,000 posts I think that's impossible.

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  • 10
    Pretty amazing that he could essentially take a 2 year hiatus/vacation and come back and still be the top user
    – jamesSampica
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:36
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    Jon Skeet is immortal isn't he?
    – user234239
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:39
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    I agree that with 30000 posts he is unlikely to stop hitting the daily rep cap for a very long time. A quick query on the data explorer suggests that he is getting 909 up votes a day over the last 90 days from posts more than 150 days old (data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/139099/…).
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:13
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Jon Skeet is about 143K reputation above the next highest users. Furthermore, he has over 27,000 posts. He hit the reputation cap today 6 hours in to the day. Most likely, he will get 200 reputation even if he doesn't answer another question for a long time to come. But that will limit his ability to get accepted answers, dropping his rate down some. This quarter, he has earned 27.6K reputation. We are almost through the quarter, let's say there's been about 85 days, or 17K reputation via the cap. That means he earned 10K extra reputation through either bounties or accepted answers over the reputation limit. Okay, so what does all of that mean?

If Jon Skeet passively quit today, he would likely still continue to get 200 reputation most days for some time to come. A better estimate can be found by what his "Passive" reputation is, which can be easily found via "My Money for Jam". This would be great, but it unfortunately crashes for Jon Skeet. So I looked around a bit more and found an interesting query, "Staying Power". And that one crashed too... As MikeD mentioned in the comments, with some approximations, his passive reputation is averaging 900, and his older than 4 years is averaging 292, so he's probably going to repcap most days for some time to come.

In the same time, if one of his closest competitors kept up, he would lose his lead by about 13K/quarter (Highest reputation this quarter is 30K as of writing). So that means he would stop being the highest reputation user in about 11 quarters, give or take, or 3 years. But most likely he would not continue to get 200 reputation every day if he passively quit for 4 years. If he stopped increasing his reputation entirely, he would likely have the lead for about 1 year, assuming people kept up their rate. Thus, I would state that it would probably take at least 3 years before anyone overtook him, if he passively quit today. And it would take even longer if no one was actually trying to manage the task, and people suddenly stopped upvoting his answers, which seems unlikely.

Fudging the numbers even more, and given the likelihood that no one would keep up that extreme rate for the time required to make it happen, I'd say his lead is probably safe for at least 4 years, maybe longer, if he stops answering questions today. But that just wouldn't be any fun...

Even if he keeps his current rate, he is 2K below the top person for the quarter. At that rate, given the #2 user, he could keep his #1 spot up for about 20 years, with his recent "Slacking" rate of only ~28K/quarter.

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  • Wow. He hits the reputation cap by 6am?!? In that case I reckon that given his huge backlog of answers and the enduring popularity of c# and Java he should easily be hitting the daily reputation cap for 5 years hence I'm not sure you can factor that into your calculation.
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:42
  • @MikeD: He doesn't hit it that early on the weekends, but you are right. I'm working on adjusting my calculation now.
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Sep 25, 2013 at 13:51
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    606,897 - 464,140 = 143K not 250K
    – Martin Smith
    Sep 25, 2013 at 14:09
  • @MartinSmith: That's what I get for doing math in my head when I didn't get enough sleep the night before.
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Sep 25, 2013 at 14:11
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    @PearsonArtPhoto I created a quick query in the data explorer to approximate Jon Skeets passive rep for the last 90 days. It was a daily average of 909 up and 0.84 down! I had to make some approximations so that the query didn't time out so posts within the last 150 days aren't considerd. (data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/139099/…)
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:10
  • In fact he is still getting 292 up votes/day from questions more than four years old so it is fair to assume that he will hit the daily rep cap for at least 5 years without answering any new questions.
    – MikeD
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:19
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2021 Update

At the moment Gordon Linoff, the #2 gains about 11000 quarterly reputation over Jon. With a difference about 121.000 it will take him 11 more quarters to overtake him. Meaning @Kaz's guestimate was about four quarters or one year too optimistic. At the moment it looks like it will take until 2024 until Jon is no longer #1.

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