How I got to the top 1% of StackOverflow | Hacker News Reader

How I got to the top 1% of StackOverflow

medium.com

15 pointsthunderbong10 comments

Well, I'm in the top 1% of StackOverflow because I asked a few relevant questions over a decade ago and it just sort of happened. Who cares?

It's a nice article on how to be a helpful programmer, but I don't think focusing on what percentile you rank in a social media-esque website is very healthy.

That wasn't the angle I got from the post at all. To me they were focusing on how un-noteworthy it actually is to be top 1%. All they had to seemingly do was take an extra couple seconds to upvote answers, perhaps post a question when a lack of existing answers necessitated it or add onto what others had already said.

The message I took from the post was that it doesn't take a lot to do your part in contributing to the wider community

That's fair. I was jumping to conclusions a bit.

I think I was focused on them saying that the reason for their ranking was that they were an active part of the community and was contrasting that to my experience. I haven't used the site since I was a fledgling engineer who defaulted to asking S.O. multiple times a day. My lack of engagement in the past decade didn't prevent a meteoric rise in community points.

I do think the underlying message of "it's good to try and contribute to your community and it's not that effortful to do so in a way that benefits everyone" is a good message to try and convey. I'll try to reel back my snark a little going forward.

True. I think both are arguing the same. Just different takes on how silly it is. Asking one single, basic question, arguably uninteresting, but just asked early on, grants more access "permissions" than the total of thousands of in-depth questions and answers.

I am not top 1%, but 3%, and to be honest, I have never been that active on the SO. I wrote one answer, which is easy to find in the documentation, something about JSON serialization with C#. People just kept upvoting this answer for more than 10 years, and that is how I keep my reputation. None of the answers, that I actually had to research, or spent more than a few minutes of my time, got that much traction as the one I have mentioned above.

Based on that, I would not trust much anybody from the top % of the reputation on SO. It does not mean anything.

This is an answer if somebody is interested https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15915503/net-newtonsoft-...

I participated actively in SO's early days. However, the platform has (perhaps inevitably) gone downhill. Outdated content, homework questions, wrong information - the signal-to-noise ratio has gotten a lot worse. Add in the pedants, who can be as unpleasant as Wikipedia moderators. It's just not a very nice place anymore.

The pedants are worst on the meta

Me, too!

I was super active way back in the day and managed to write a pretty highly-voted answer, as well as many normal. I really enjoyed it, and randomly getting free SO merch in the mail was an awesome way to foster loyalty.

Still in the top 0.01% (yay humblebrag day!) but had to look that up since I don't visit much these days.

I like the thought of having helped a lot of people, I hope that is at least somewhat true.

What the article doesnt mention is that its not easy to ask a good question or give a good answer, as is made evident by going through a new question/new answer queues that are littered with code-only/cryptic stuff.

The hidden value of such participation, at least for me, is that it forces you to express yourself clearly, if you want to get any real help that is.

I’m top .55%, come at me bro. Anyway… yeah, I got there by using it daily, looking for challenging questions that not only helped a lot of people (I hope) but also taught me or reinforced a lot of things along the way.

That’s the way you should use it; to be helpful and share knowledge, engage with lots of interesting and often very impressive devs out there, and help mod the site. The gamification part is an added bonus but I found that it fostered a bad attitude when I looked at it strictly as a competition, and I think answer quality suffered as well. Eventually your body of work will start accumulating points without having to put much into the site. Personally, I don’t have much time to research answers anymore.

Help first, everything else later. Just be aware it’s a tedious and labor intensive endeavor that ultimately has little value outside of feeling good about sharing knowledge and helping someone who’s going through something you’ve suffered through as well.

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