[brudgers]

in general the mechanisms of the site don't allow for correcting things like that

It has been awhile since I used stackoverflow, So I don’t know if it’s still this way but it used to be that anyone could edit almost anything except comments.

With some points, you were able to propose edits for review.

With more points you could make edits without any review.

With enough points you could review edits that people had proposed.

And when you didn’t have many points, making edits earned points. And finding things that needed fixing was how I started earning points.

Of course, most people don’t care about earning points and there’s nothing wrong with that. And different tags have different cultural norms…I avoided Python for that reason (your broken code Print example is an example of what turned me off of Python culture).

[PaulHoule]

I am point motivated but I never got motivated enough to play the S.O. game that I would run the gauntlet it took to become a full participant.

The folks who ran the Semantic Technology Conferences ran a "Semantic Overflow" instance of the S.O. software and I discovered on that instance I could get a very high score by asking questions, not answering them. I could have outpaced the #1 contributor but I thought he really deserved his spot so I didn't take it but I took the #2 spot because he kept closing my tickets for an open source project he maintained. I did look at that stats and found that nobody had done anything similar on the real S.O.

One trouble with all systems of recognition is that a lot of people have pointy qualifications. My opinions on many subjects aren't that good but on some I really am an expert and it's particularly frustrated when you know you really know your shit and you get shouted down.

[brudgers]

I thought maybe SO points might be a way to land a programming job since I did not know anyone in meat space. It wasn’t. But it was an excuse to write clever answers, get positive feedback, and learn something while helping people. With time my interests moved on and I seem to still pick up a few points a year based on looking at my profile today.

Anyway, stackoverflow was/is a pretty amazing project and I listened to all the original podcast with Spolsky and Atwood while intercity driving. The very original podcast started when development started and was a weekly phone call between them.

Like I said, different tags had different cultures. I spent time in Racket and SML mostly…small ponds for small fish.