Recently I had the nerve to criticize the closing of questions and the ease someone could gain or lose points in this game ;). Here is the link:
Why do some questions get closed for no reason?
Now I am either trying to make this trilogy of sites a friendlier place, or trying to get zero rep points. After not receiving a response from Mr. Atwood I thought I should cool off and ask others if it was me being a butt-head (that hardly ever happens). I am not alone in my opinion.
Let me say again that I am not advocating an any question policy. If you want to know the timing for your 427 CI / 500 HP motor, this ain't the forum. If you want an algorithm / code to calculate CI or HP then SO should be fine with that. And who cares if it is homework? I am 55 and am quite certain there is a lot still to be learned.
Someone said that this is a democratic process. Huh??? If so then wouldn't it take more than 5 votes to get tossed. I assume that there are more that 9 contributors.
When it comes to reputations my first vote would be for no scoring mechanism at all. I have this same criticism of all the forums I troll. The person with a bizillion points that weighs in on any subject has to be noticed. What is not accounted for is where the points were earned. You may have earned all of the points in some language related topic, and then make a bozo comment in a network related topic. Just today I happened to spot an old link talking about GPS Timing. There were people there with a lot higher points than me that were "Stratum 0" this and that all over the place. It was a bunch of BS of course. So really, in a lot of cases reputation doesn't mean much other than you have been around awhile and don't say a lot of stupid things. Most of us can spot the smart people without the score being kept. The ability to express an opinion that is scored should be a lot harder than it is.
I am still waiting for an answer to why Mr. Atwoods question "How much network latency is “typical” for east - west coast USA?" wasn't closed for being vague, hypothetical, etc.
Are these sites about knowledge or popularity?
I have become brutal in my opinions over programming / networking knowledge in the last year. The reason for that is because I went from being a chicken to a pig. When you have a microcomputer running in your chest that is capable of administering a shock that could kill you stuff like that happens.
I suspect I will attain one of my goals.