My Issue with Reputation

Question

Reputation: the lifeblood of the community.

Except it really isn't. I had to struggle to get to where I am reputation-wise. I couldn't answer questions for the longest time, even my own. And when I did do so, both the answer and the question got downvoted into oblivion. I'm frustrated by how new user-UNfriendly this site seems. I want discussion!

Commenting on questions, even if it's just to clarify: 50 reputation. Not an easy task if you are bad at writing answers, look at things very differently, or need more information and are new on the site. I can understand the requirement for the religion sites and Puzzling, but things like Blender and Worldbuilding? I don't care if it costs me, but 50 reputation is too high for some folks.

Even if it takes 50 rep to comment on another person's answer, it shouldn't take 50 rep just to ask the author "well what do you mean when you say that x is y-ing z?" or "Could you clarify that for me please?"

And before you edit this, please keep in mind that I do have Asperger's Syndrome and thus look at everything in a very different way. I'm okay if you downvote this a little, just... don't bash me on it, okay?

Answer 1

While the reputation system may seam unfair to you now, I hope to help you see that it is actually a well balanced privileges system.

First off nearly anyone with at least 1 rep can ask or answer any question. (So I don't see how you "couldn't answer questions for the longest time.")

It is not hard to gain 5 up votes on a few answers, to get to the comment privilege (anyone can comment on their own posts).
If SE did not have the barrier for the comments then we would have all kinds of spam trouble with the comments. (As it is now comments do not go through any review process, low quality or spammy looking question and answers do.)

Don't take it personal, but if you are having trouble gaining rep and are question the system, there probably is a reason your posts are not being up voted.
Take your mushroom question, the way you first posted it, it would be likely to get down votes; because of the title and the first sentence. Looking through your answers, I see that you have only received one DV on all your answers (remember one UV equals out 5 DVs).

See gaining rep does more then let you do more on the site, it is a measure of how much the BSE community trusts you, and of what quality the posts you write are.

Answer 2

Those of us who have been around for a while, or have plenty of Blender experience, are tooled up to answer questions fast and effectively. It is by no means easy for a newcomer to compose an acceptable response at the same speed. Feel less bad about that! :)

This reputation threshold is by design. Only people (such as yourself) who for some reason feel an affinity to this 'cause' will stick around and gradually gather reputation. Without that rep barrier you have no idea how much spam we'd get, it would be fun for no-one.

It may seem less easy now to ask novel questions, since we've been around for 2 years, and have amassed 11.000 questions. Questions are frequently marked as duplicates, not because the question was asked exactly that way before, but because the answer of another question also answers that new question. This is to some extent because new people are less intimate with the search feature, partially because the search isn't very fuzzy yet. (ie requires you to spell stuff correctly, and has only limited contextual understanding)

But if you look at the questions that get upvotes, look at the top 20 questions and you might see a pattern. If you want to game BSE ask modular questions, spread them out, make sure the question can be answered (shows clarity and thoughtful composition) and doesn't require a tonne of work to answer, provide .blends or screenshots.

Every day we get around 20 questions, a rough estimate is that 15 of those are unique/novel to some extent, we are not at 'peak' question yet :)

Answer 3

Personally, this is something that I felt like I struggled with when I was new, but I didn't have it as bad as you. Think about it like writing a paper for school: it's about professionalism, and respect.

Now I think you realize that, but your profesh is a bit lacking. (mine is too. :-) take a look at my first question Projectiles in the BGE

Using verbal quirks and similes make a question very interesting to read, but sometimes they make it hard to understand at the same time. Now lets annalize some parts of your question Trying to restrict movement of player without causing it to fly off the screen.

I'm trying to restrict the player's movement so that someone can't just barrel through the level.

^^That one made me laugh, and it explained your problem well: Good

So I'm making a three-dimensional danmakufu game in Blender

This one not so much. You started with "So" which indicates a conversational tone, great for chat, but for questions it detracts from the quick-informational asking feel. Too boot, not everyone knows what a danmakufu game is.

AND STOP POSTING ANSWERS IN THE COMMENTS

putting stuff like this in the middle of a question breaks the flow of information.

Over all, I think people need to stop DVing you, and suggest edits, or help in another constructive way. The only thing for you to do though, is maybe cut back on the conversationallism until you're a more solid member of the Blender Stack Exchange community.

Answer 4

With respect to the comment in another answer about more experienced users being able to answer more quickly, even if someone else has provided an answer to a question before you were able to, if you have a good answer, post it anyway. You never know when another user will find your answer more useful than the answer of a member with more reputation, and vote up you answer instead of the other. In some ways, the experience of a power Blender user can be a hindrance in forming good answers useful to novice users, either because they have become fixed in their workflows, or because some of the steps are so ingrained in their work habits that they get ignored when forming their answer, while less experienced users are sometimes more careful to include all the steps when composing their answer. Also, adding a tag to a question counts as an edit.

One way of gaming the system is suggested in another answer, but there are other ways to game the system, too. For example, having a suggested edit to another post (either question or answer) accepted gains two points of reputation, though the edit has to be more than a certain number of characters until one reaches a certain reputation. A suggested edit expanding BSE to the full form Blender.stackexchange might be useful, as new users on the site might find the acronym unfamiliar and hindering their understanding. On the other hand, correcting to to too won't work by itself to gain reputation, as the number of characters is too short. Reviewing old posts, you'll notice some with awkwardly worded titles, or common misspellings, such as using one of there, they're, or their where one of the other two is intended. A side benefit of such reviews is that you become more acquainted with the content of older questions, and will soon start to identify yourself when a post is a duplicate, or is answered by a different question which is not a duplicate.

Also, if one is a known member with sufficient reputation on another stackexchange site, joining a different stackexchange site under the same login, generally results in a grant of 100 reputation points on the new site upon joining. Finally, when you attains the reputation that earns the reputation of voting questions or answers down, use the privilege sparingly, as downvotes cost you a couple of reputation points every time they are cast.