[simias]

From a "lurker" perspective who often stumbles on SO after a web search it's really a great resource.

On the other hand I never actually contributed anything to the website... because it won't let me. One day I stumbled upon a question regarding some problem I had, the accepted answer had a C code snippet that contained an error. I thought I'd be a good netizen and decided to create an account to submit a correction. It turns out that it wouldn't let me make an edit that was less than 6 character long (why? It was just a one character typo). So I decided to add a comment pointing it out, hoping that somebody would be able to fix it for me. You can't comment without a certain reputation threshold.

So basically if I get it right if you have a new account you can only ask questions or answer them. Except if like me you only end up on SO from your search engine and generally end up on already-answered questions (or questions you don't know the answer to since you're looking for them) then there's nothing for you to do. I'm sure they must have done a lot of testing to end up with this system but it basically means that I'll probably never contribute anything to their website.

[aeorgnoieang]

> I'm sure they must have done a lot of testing to end up with this system but it basically means that I'll probably never contribute anything to their website.

I think it's really more that it just ended-up like that. It is sad that everyone 'can't' contribute, but that's okay really. Not everyone should be contributing.

But I suspect you could contribute. You mention finding questions to which you don't know the answer. Surely, for some of those questions at least, you later found an answer elsewhere. When you do, go back to the question and add an answer based on what you learned.

It's also perfectly acceptable (and commendable) to just add an answer that's a little bit better than the existing answers. Hell, just combining two or more answers into a single (comprehensible) answer is a relatively easy way to contribute (and help others).

[nt8eo923nt45]

If I recall, there are actually a number of things you can do to get rep besides questions and answers. You can edit a post (with more than 6 characters), you can do a review, you can flag a post for moderator attention, and I think even your first up-vote gives you a point or two. (Some of those might award badges instead - it's been a long time and the rules sometimes change.)

I feel like SO can't win no matter what it does. It has some limits, like requiring at least 6 characters before an edit is deemed useful to stop it from becoming a breeding ground for "grammar nazis" and other similar types. If they didn't do that, people would complain it's overrun with grammar nazis who don't focus on the actual code being posted. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

[shagie]

Neither review, flag, nor vote give reputation.

The only ways to get reputation is to create content that gets up votes or do edits that improve the post.

[vehementi]

This has been an exact summary of my experience with SO. Extremely useful when searching for things. Difficult to get started contributing to.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The thresholds for unlocking privileges are there to filter out offensive trolls and other drains on the community. This can be a bit annoying since it applies separately to every subdomain and I can't be bothered to build up rep in every place that I might want to make an occasional comment.

[shagie]

Once you have sufficient rep on one site, you get 100 rep on all sites which is enough to comment everywhere.

[mark-r]

The +100 that you get for signing up on a new subdomain is supposed to get you over that hump. But I don't remember how much rep you need to get the signup bonus.