[zerr]

Interesting, you talk about the competition, breaking in, monitoring unanswered questions so you can answer first, etc... - What's the motivation behind it?

I guess it is not just contributing to the common knowledge, but maybe to show off your profile to potential employers or similar?

[fusiongyro]

For me, I just like being helpful. The rep is nice too. Stupid internet points are pretty motivational, but I also review edits, and you don't get any rep for that. I would be flattered if an employer had noticed me on there, but I don't think it's likely to happen. I've been active on SO for longer than I've been active here, but I have gotten many friendly recruitment emails from here and none from there.

Prolog is an extremely small niche. Most of the questions are pretty basic and from students. I don't like seeing students being told odd things about Prolog, with a dismissive air of "Prolog makes no sense, you just have to feed it this nonsense to make it go." So another part of my motivation is to keep this sad religion alive and inviting. Haskell has a much larger community of people working very hard to make it inviting.

The hiring angle probably works better for other niches. Every Java EE question is answered by BalusC. I imagine that pays dividends for his consulting: he's the most helpful guy in that area and I'd hire him in a second if I were in charge of that kind of thing.

[tiedemann]

My last two job offers came from people who had checked out my SO answers among other things.

[fusiongyro]

Wow, I feel so disproven.