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Stackoverflow is a programming Q&A website that has overtaken the old and spammy Experts Exchange.
Part of the incentive to participate in Stackoverflow is reputation points. These points allow you special privileges such as editing other people’s questions or offering some as incentive to answer one of your questions. Once you receive 10,000 reputation, you will get access to special “moderation tools”.
Now that I recently reached 10,000 reputation along with 223 out of 84,000 other people, I thought I would share some tips to get there.
1. Be the First to Answer. Even at the cost of quality.
In Stackoverflow answers are arranged first by vote number and submission/edit time. Being the first answer that people see is a huge advantage.
I have seen many incorrect/inferior answers on top. People are too lazy to scroll down. Too often the voters are just as clueless as the asker and will vote up whatever has the most votes already. This turns into a snowballing effect.
You can also edit your answer as much as you like for 5 minutes after submitting without showing up as an edit and changing positions. I first discovered this when people wrote fast incorrect answers and then copied my correct answer a few minutes later. This usually happens in easy questions which tend to get more votes.
2. Use Downvotes and Comments Strategically
Downvoting an answer will cost you 1 rep point and the target 2 rep points. Even though it seems useless, it is still a powerful tool. Remember #1. If you can’t be the first to answer, it may help you to temporarily down-vote the top answer so that people will see yours first. Then you can cancel it when you’ve gained the advantage.
Nonstrategic: Someone down-voting all my answers out of jealousy. Don't do this.
Negative comments are also powerful. I have seen answers that remained low despite revisions that made it the best answer.
3. Use obnoxious in-your-face formatting and lists.
The vast majority of voters like colors and pretty things. A quick glance at the top voted answers will likely have at least one of these:
- Liberally bolded text. Sometimes with a giant No or Yes at the top.
- A picture. An XKCD or Dilbert comic is an automatic +10.
- A huge piece of code or a single 1 liner.
- A list.
Typical High Vote Answer/Question
4. Be Aware of the 200 rep/day Limit
This is probably obvious to many of you but is worth mentioning. Each day restarts at 12 AM GMT. I found this greasemonkey script useful for keeping track of rep earned per day and when the day resets.
There are also a few things that can take you over this limit.
- Getting 15 rep for being an accepted answer
- Accepting an answer to your question for 2 rep. This is why you should save questions.
- Bounties (You won’t get these that often)
- Associating accounts (more on that below)
You should try to get these points after you’ve hit 200 rep points for the day. If you do it the other way around, you will still be capped at +200.
The benefits of Google 20% free time: Be like this guy averaging 235 rep/day. JK please don't blacklist me.
5. Edit, But Don’t Edit Too Much
Each time you edit your answer or the question after the 5 minute period, the question will be bumped up to the front of the page if it isn’t there already. This is useful for gathering more votes and viewers. However if you edit your answer too many times (around 7-8 for me, SO refuses to release actual numbers), your answer will get the “Community Wiki” of doom. This means that any more votes will not give any points. Reverting your answer will not remove this “Community Wiki” label.
6. Associate your other accounts
You can connect your SO account to the sister sites like Serverfault by clicking on your name, and the “accounts” tab. Each connection will yield 100 reputation points.
Warning: I was notified that you must have at least 200 rep on the website you associate from to get the points, otherwise you will not receive any.
Please Read This if you feel the urge to send hate mail or comments.
Related posts:
You haven’t addressed the most important question: WHY. Gathering reputation points in this way seems like a pretty time intensive exercise – why is it worth doing this?
Why gather rep points?
The same reason people collect stamps or coins or lvl 80 uber-epic gear.
Our serotonin levels must be maintained.
And so he can trade them in for Internet dollars.
But isn’t that missing the point? I use SO and gathered some (+2000) rep but my main goal is to provide answers to actual questions and not to abuse the achievement system.
SO was created as an answer site and not as a “grab all you can” site.
Jon Skeet has written a similar post – only he has explained how to write good answers and not how to “cheat” SO.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/02/17/answering-technical-questions-helpfully.aspx
I wanted to see if I could get to 10,000 rep in a reasonable amount of time.
In my quest to gain a large amount of reputation with high quality answers, I found out that people were not competing fairly and were using these same tactics against me. The only questions that are left are very difficult and you would be lucky to get 2 or 3 votes from them.
Now that I reached 10k, I wanted to share my experience and warnings to the newbies, instead of keeping these things a secret.
I also doubt that people didn’t already know Jon Skeet listed there. In fact I disagree with the guessing because if someone else comes up with the correct answer, you will be mercilessly downvoted.
“In my quest to gain a large amount of reputation ”
sad
Its an experiment. Things were learned. STFU.
That is my fav comment of the day!
It’s. Douche.
that sounds pretty gay
Ultimately, it comes down to this: are you in it for the rep, or are you in it for the answers?
You can usually spot the former. They post quick, obviously-googled answers, hang around popular “discussion”-type questions posting empty populist tripe, take offense if you point out errors or omissions, and tend to whine a lot if they get down-voted or otherwise feel “cheated”.
The latter tend to be more subtle, outside of the most prolific. They also post quickly, but stick around to improve their answers, graciously accept suggestions and address concerns.
If getting a number next to your name is the reward you’re looking for, then SO will give it to you. May it bring you all the happiness it is capable of…
Why not force a rep point system overhaul, rather than tsk in disapproval like a retiree.
“In my day, we were in it for the quality, not the reputation points. Sure, you’re having fun now, but you’ll get your comeuppance.”
WTF?
I’m saying, if you’re looking for Q&A, you can do that now. If you’re looking for rep games, you can do that too, for all the good it’ll do you.
So many people here – including Mr. Codexon – seem to be missing the point. You can’t *use* rep. It’s not worth anything on e-bay, and my landlord wouldn’t take badges in lieu of rent. It’s a little game we play while answering questions, like the corn husking contests or pea shelling races we had as kids, some small amusement to keep us from getting bored while the work got done.
The problem isn’t the game, it’s the folks who apparently think the game is all there is. Switching it up for a new game doesn’t solve anything… It just creates fodder for a new “simple tips” post a few months from now.
Shog,
I hear what you’re saying, and I do agree with you to a large extent, however, ultimately, EVERYONE is in it for the reputation, whether they admit it or not.
How do I know? Simple. Remove the reputation and badge system from SO completely, then see just how many people bother to stick around and post good, well reasoned answers. It won’t last long!
Answer quickly at cost of quality,
Down vote other answers regardless of content to gain more prominence,
Use garish formatting,
Bump your answer up to the top.
People that do any of these things are pissing all over the quality of SO and I think you’re a dick for encouraging such behavior.
I have debated on meta.stackoverflow.com that they perversely incentivise people.
I have seen people with 2000 points for asking stupid questions, there are many gross perverse incentivisations.
As I stated in my criticism, their rewards system (points) must reward intelligent contributors over noise. Presently asking dumb questions can routinely garner you 20 to 50 points per ridiculous question, because there are so many people hanging out there to be the first to answer.
I’m a developer of 20 years experience and have a some highly specific information I could convey, but after playing for a week, I could see the complete pointlessness of it. I refuse to contribute to the site because of the idiocy of the points scoring.
I find the poster here to be making a positive contribution, stackoverflow deserves to be held up to ridicule.
Thank you! I couldn’t agree more. The points and the ’social’ aspect are terrible and contribute nothing at all to the usefulness of the site.
Yes, points for asking slashdot opinion style stuff mixed in with technical stuff – what is the point of this?
You see someone that made a witty remark regarding Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 or something get 4000 points – where is the incentive for the true top 1% to contribute their experience?
In the end it’s just a bunch of young graduates answering questions on garbage collection or the necessity of virtual destructors. Mostly meaningless noise.
The issue I tried to raise with them is that the culture they are left with will be what they have nurtured. The more they nurture noise over substance, the more likely a banal culture of mediocrity and points scoring over intelligent answers will terminally infect the total culture of the site.
It’s a shame, because it’s got some good things going for it.
You are a sad, sad man.
I second that emotion.
WOW! Ding-ding-ding. You totally missed the point of an internet resource. Way to go, you! Now why don’t you and all the other fucking retards using SO for some kind of moronic ego trip fuck off back to expertsexchange?
If I wanted rep to boost my ego I would have kept this secret instead of letting people know.
You’re just like those people who post about how to become a “professional” twatter. Use the system for it’s originated intentions.
It’s not about being a hipster unless you’re a myspacefag. It’s not about being a poweruser unless you’re on digg. It’s about helping the entire community when it comes to Stack Overflow.
Hell even their about page says: “No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home — better programming is our goal.”
I’m going to email their team about this ‘experiment’ and see what they think.
So why not force a change in the incentive system? You can’t shame anonymous chumps into respecting the quality of a site with a flawed reputation system at its center. All the head-shaking you’re doing there at your desk or on your couch isn’t going to contribute a damned thing to the quality of SO in the long term.
> You can’t shame anonymous chumps.
T,FTFY.
Can be discussed here as well:
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/17204/6-simple-tips-to-get-stackoverflow-reputation-fast
moron of first class. I hope SO bans your account and other accounts showing this behavior .
they should now add ‘comment for downvoting’ now.
You’ve exposed some systematic weaknesses of the SO quality score. If I worked for SO I’d thank you.
My proposed solution is to manually identify X judges who represent a nicecross section of programming backgrounds. These judges are selected by their continued support and passion for helping programmers. Over time their upvotes would create new quality judges in an intelligent manner.
I used a system like this for characterizing 3D shapes in the protein database (kinase). The templates were created from known kinase chains, we called them motifs. Thanks to Tony Sommese, and Jim Dwulit for really making it happen (I just helped out on that project).
Another case for this model is crystal formation. Seed crystals allow for fractal like formation of patterns in supporting media dishes.
Googles voting system also relies on “reliable” sources to help judge the value of links.
Reference papers use citations to determine how close an author is to a renowned scientist.
I don’t understand all the criticism.
I for one fully support this post, because:
- it reflects an accurate knowledge of how the system works
- illustrates some potential good and bad things about the system
- is written by someone who has spent a lot of time participating on the site (7 months, 300+ answers)
I think it’s unfair and a bit rude to attack codexon.
While I do disagree with #2 (please don’t downvote your peers for a temporary competitive “advantage”), even that point highlights some possible ideas for changing and improving the system. We all have the same goal — to get great answers to our programming questions.
Wow, really Jeff? You don’t agree with downvoting peers, but you also dont see a problem with intentionally providing poor quality answers just to be the first…
I have to agree with everyone else here, not only is it a pathetic goal, but its also downright rude. This blogger is telling people to intentionally lower the quality of Stack Overflow, and you think thats okay…
wow.
Rubbish, he’s not proposing intentionally lowering it, he’s proposing improving it. Things are improved by exposing their weaknesses not trying to hide the flaws.
All those commentators attacking the post are just suggesting that SO be allowed to deteriorate. SO is great, exposing and so (hopefully) moving towards a solution is the most supportive stance possible.
I wonder how many of the attackers are in the 223?
How about a rule change to deincentivize #2? Change SO so that if you downvote, not only does it cost a point, you also loose the ability to gain any points from that question. For legit users, we would have to make a choice — should I spend one of my points to quiet a troll, OR should I spend time crafting a better answer? Another strategy would be to make downvotes undeletable so one couldn’t use it for temporary position advantage as suggested here.
It is obvious that SO kind of lives off people “hunting” for rep, otherwise the whole rep system wouldn’t make much sense … at all. Joel talked about that a bit in the “Learning from Stackoverflow.com” Google TechTalk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ
It’s shit like this that ruin user supported sites for everyone
I think people are critisising the mentality behind this post. While the blogger has pros and cons of SO, he is clearly not interested in providing high quality answers.
The bottom line is that this post shows that the SO reputation system doesn’t work. Perfectly valid programming questions are getting closed, and perfectly good answers are being downvoted all for the sake of programmer ego.
I agree with you. The problem with this post is intent and not content.
This post would have been less polemical if the author of this post had the intent of pointing out the issues that exist with the StackOverflow reputation system rather than of teaching us how to abuse it.
But then again, polemics generate traffic.
I thought the idea behind SO was so that if you’re stumped by a particular problem you can go there to find the answer…..
…If you can’t find the answer you ask the question and wait for the answer….
Who cares if the people giving me an answer are weird ego maniacs with no life outside SO and their rep points? If they give the right answer quickly I’m happy and on my way.
As per everything else in the world, 90% of the content. So what.
(That was supposed to say….
LESS THAN 1% of the users provide 90% of the content)
If you spent the same amount of time overtiming, you might even have got a raise by now. Why spend so much time cheating a system for virtual points?
Wow, I can’t believe the amount of venom being spewed at the author. I take this post much more as an expose’ on problems with the SO achievement system as opposed to a walk-through to get to 10,000 points because 99% of folks could care less.
Codexon has proven there are loopholes with the achievement system and detailed what he did to take advantage of them. Hopefully this will help the SO developers modify the system to eliminate the loopholes.
This sort of behavior is retard and should not be allowed. In other news, my username rules.
Any site which both computes reputation must be aware of potential abuses in that system. They must further be aware of how to change their algorithms to counter such abuse. In some systems of governance, they call this “checks and balances” – in game development they strive for “game balance.” The presence of Jeff Atwood on this thread is an indicator that in future we will likely see modifications to the systems described in this post.
If your intent was to point out flaws in the SO rep system, why didn’t you take your information to SO and engage them privately? Instead, you gamed the system, and then ran to the rooftops to shout out hey look at me I figured out how to game the system! Is that supposed to get you meta reputation points in the blog-o-sphere or something?
Even if your heart was in the right place, you didn’t think it through very well. That’s why people are flinging poo at you FYI. But hey, now you are older, and wiser, and next time you’ll know that it’s better to take your observations directly to the source first, and behave like a professional person offering constructive ideas, instead of acting like a self promoting drama queen.
There was no self-promotion in this post. There’s also no value in privately engaging with SO to discuss their rep reward system. Why not force an overhaul? It will improve quality in the long term.
As someone who’s participated in SO quite a bit, I am often frustrated with aspects of the system like those pointed out in this post. For example, duplicate questions answered by the same people several times in a row. Even well intentioned people with lots of points can’t seem to avoid this point whoring, and it’s completely true that the first answer is highly prefered regardless of quality. The designers of the system have included incentives like points and badges and are proud of how much these motivate people, yet have also designed a system that’s very easy to game. This is a flawed combination. Hopefully, posts like this will make it better.
About your #6, associating accounts:
It appears you get 100 points for associated accounts. If you link StackOverflow and ServerFault and then StackOverflow and SuperUser your end result is: SO +100, SF +100, SU +100, _NOT_ SO +200.
We have all played games, and this reminds me of the classic PK/no-PK debate (I come down on the no-PK side) that has raged since time immemorial.
I’ve seen it on Battle.net, I’ve seen it on Yahoo Pinochle, and now I’ve seen it on Stack Overflow, which isn’t even a “game” in the sense we typically think of one. But wait, SO IS a game; everyone has “points” associated with their login! Points can be compared, and that makes a partial ordering good enough to establish a ladder, and….
There will always be those whose intent is to game the system, and those whose intent is to “follow the rules”. Most of either camp will never be able to get the other side to “understand”. Bitching out a PK for killing you is like chastising the Scorpion (from the fable); it is in their nature, and there will be no remorse forthcoming.
Thanks for starting the process of ruining a brilliant site.
The people hating this post sound a bit upset that they’re not going to get their 10,000 points now
. That’s about all they’re saying.
Heh I suppose. The funny thing is that the special 10,000 point tools aren’t really that impressive. Many of the tools require other votes in order to carry out the action.
Anyone can game any system.
IMO true hackers take joy in analyzing the pros and cons of any system, and true hackers will appreciate any thoughtful analysis of the same.
Your post was not malicious and is, IMO, in the spirit of publicly revealing security weaknesses so that others can be aware of and/or fix them.
In my opinion: Good work! And thank you for posting it, despite the negative reactions you anticipated and received.
I have written the similar post on my blog here:
http://sarfraznawaz.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/stackoverflow-tips-tricks-5/