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Comment by lawgimenez | Hacker News Reader

My SO account is almost 12 years, with just over 2k reputation and I don't really care. Until now I am still somewhat helping answer some basic questions in the mobile development area tags, my only gripe with SO is the hostile nature of some mods with large reputation. Some seem to get a kick out of this and forgot that reputation does not translate to expertise.

For 12 years, they have not figured this one out. New users will ask a very valid question and then won't respond anymore. I have seen this one played out every single day. Back in the day, users were generous with the upvotes even for a simple basic question, this is not the case anymore today.

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I think that with the rise of push notifications, no one really goes to a site to check notifications anymore. So the new user may have not developed the muscle memory to go back to SO and participate. I suspect this also has something to do with the decline of forums. Reddit still works because the app sends 200 notifications a day, but without it, I don’t think it would be as popular.

Also SO is participation hostile unless you’re a pro, so as a newbie I’m not going to do anything other than ask and lurk, because I’m not worthy

At least part of the reason for the hostility is that SO is a game. You get points, but you can also prevent others from getting points by voting down or removing their questions and answers.

On SO this hostility is pronounced because participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job.

> participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job

It’s true, though. I have a high-rep account and I’ve had a few jobs fall in my lap because of that.

I don't know if we all do it the same way. I don't use push notifications for barely anything, because I don't want to be disturbed by random sites (least of all linkedin or SO.)

But you’re not the average person.

I didn't know that. Well, I suspected it, because something is clearly wrong, yeah, but.. you know what I mean?

Unless you post your own Q&A, it’s difficult to get the initial mod points to even be able to comment.

Since SO is often used in a professional capacity, that problem could have easily been fixed by dev tools providing a formal way to link to SO traffic for topics that are relevant to the team.

It's just been a while since anyone has started trying to integrate tools with each other, outside of the established players.

these peasants with high reputation thinking they are johnskeet

reputation is meaningless and bloated in stackoverflow now there are many 100k reputation people because asking or answering basic shits on javascript/python/pandas/git

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