Disingenuity of "Reputation ... is earned by convincing ... users that you know what you're talking about"

Question

The Stack Overflow FAQ states:

Reputation is never given, it is earned by convincing other Stack Overflow users that you know what you're talking about.

Stack Overflow gives the reputation that one can gain from asking a question parity with the reputation that one can gain from answering a question. An interesting question yields +10 reputation, while an interesting answer yields +10. Votes up and down affect reputation equally.

Answering a question well is more indicative of your subject knowledge than asking a question. In a majority of cases, people who are able and prepared to answer a question have a greater level of confidence and familiarity with the subject matter than the questioner does. Please note I do not assert that this is universally true, just that it is true most of the time.

Therefore it is very difficult to differentiate between people who ask and people who answer questions based on reputation; reputation does not differentiate between people who know what they are talking about, and those who do not.

A note on this—I've read quite a few questions about reputation on meta today because I am frustrated by high-rep users who ask hundreds of questions but do not vote-up or mark-as-answered (my) answers. I understand that there is a utility to offering reputation to such users because they keep the flow of questions high and drive traffic to the site. However, if that is part of what you want reputation to be, it seems a little disingenuous to make the claim you do in the FAQ about the association of reputation to knowledge.

Isn't the statement "Reputation ... is earned by convincing other Stack Overflow users that you know what you're talking about" false?

Answer 1

You are showing signs of becoming addicted.

Get used to that:

1. Some of your good answers will never be accepted.
2. Some of your accepted answers will never get upvote.
3. If < 100 rep user asks question, it may never be accepted and upvoted.
4. Hi-rep user is more demanding and may not accept your good answer if he feels that there is better one.
5. Stackoverflow doesn't make finding unaccepted answers easy.
6. Reminding someone of not accepted answer can be irritating for him.
7. Most of the reputation you gain on the answers to easiest questions. People who upvote answers have to understand them. If you give a complicated answer on a very complicated question, even if it needed huge knowledge, it will probably give you almost no reputation.

And please, gain a lot of reputation on asking questions. I feel to dumb to ask worth to upvote questions. Answering comes to me easier:) Asking questions needs some knowledge.

If you search through questions here, on meta, you'll find some statistics saying that most of > 4000 rep users gained their reputation by answering.

If FAQ changed, would you really feel better?

Answer 2

Reputation is merely a way to addict people to the site by giving them a game.

It lost its original meaning the first time someone posted a humorous answer and got a lot of popularity upvotes.