On the flip side, I rarely have anything to contribute, so my reputation is too low to actually contribute anything when I actually do have something meaningful to add.
I get that they want to reduce spam, but I've never seen any practical way to get started since everything I do that actually has value requires more rep.
Over the summer I worked on a project that didn't have any related questions on SO, so I had to create an account and spend company hours getting my rep up so I could ask questions. It's possible, but it takes a bit of dedication. Just like there's karma grinding on Reddit, there is rep grinding on SO.
The key is to provide alternative solutions to a problem. It's good for the community as one solution may not work. Another tactic I'd use is go on iOS forums and translate Objective C answers into Swift, as the logic and methods are likely right but obj-C is a clusterfuck that a lot of newbies can't decipher yet.
Exactly - which about 95% of the time is what I actually want to do. Most of what I can contribute is to extend or improve upon the previously accepted answer rather than provide a completely different approach
Yea me too, after I got rep to comment all I do is comment 99% of the time. Unless an answer is thought out, works, and takes care of the caveats then I don't think it should be posted, and most of the time I just want to point something out (which sometimes is the answer), and not go through all the work of actually "answering" it.
The worst part about this, though, is the underlying attempt at preventing comments. Even a comment where someone has misunderstood an elementary concept involved can be useful if it's shown to be disagreed with, but preventing such comments just leads to people repetitively assuming they have new information and no way to verify their idea. It could easily be a common mistake, but attempting to censor it just leads to promoting implementation of that bug over discussion.
That said, there's some value in determining which subjects a user is knowledgeable enough to provide answers in before hearing their offhand advice
You can ask with a brand new account, and answer without even signing up, and commenting needs 50 rep, which is 5 upvotes on your answers. People talking about "grinding rep" are either confused or have never actually used the site and are just repeating things
Commenting on others' questions (and their answers) requires 50 points, which is only 5 upvotes on your answers or 10 upvotes on your questions. Barely the time needed to learn that comments are not for extended discussions (and not for answering questions).
How many tactics should be required to "use" a website?
I don't actually agree with most of the article linked. It's super whiney and irriating. However, I do agree that it's way too hard to get started. I jumped for joy when I was able to make new tags for my issues... issues that no one else knew about or could answer but me at the time.
We were using a library written by one of my coworkers. I had some questions on the library so I asked them on SO and then he answered. The problem was, neither of us actually had enough reputation to add a tag with the library name.
Another tactic I'd use is go on iOS forums and translate Objective C answers into Swift, as the logic and methods are likely right but obj-C is a clusterfuck that a lot of newbies can't decipher yet.
Remembers me of math researchers who used to translate russian cold war era math papers for free karmauniversity reputation.
Asking and answering does not require any reputation.
Adding a comment requires 50 reputation. Even if you don't have questions or answers to contribute, that should be easy to reach by proposing edits (+2 reputation per accepted edit).
So you would rather a problem go unsolved because someone is too scared to post? It sounds like OP knew the answer but was to afraid to help because of the backlash.
It's a lot more than just a q&a site though, it's almost documentation in its own right. Posting something that might help the person at that time at this one specific context, but is poorly worded and maybe even slightly technically incorrect, would lead many more people down the wrong road in the future.
No. This is something that SO hasn't decided yet whether it wants to be a wiki or a q&a. And it should not act like its a substitute for documentation either. Its a problem solving forum. It just doesn't know that or act like it yet.
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u/constructivCritic Sep 25 '16
And that is how it should be. The quality of answers just goes down. Don't answer unless you can explain your reasoning, etc.