I guess if you heard of this site then you must have heard about StackOverflow. StackOverflow was(is) made by the very popular blogger http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/. Since the arrival of StackOverflow there have been a few people that stick out in the helping out department over there. One of these people is Jon Skeet. The man wrote a book so he is already famous ;-). But now he finds himself on the top of the list at StackOverflow. And he wrote a blogpost about that “Stack Overflow reputation and being a micro-celebrity“.

He has some very good points.

• Spend some time in the community, post quite a lot. Shouting loudly works remarkably well on the internet – if you’re among the most prolific writers in a group, you will get noticed. Admittedly it helps to try hard to post well-written and interesting thoughts.
• After a while, a few people will refer to you in their other conversations. For instance, if someone in the Java newsgroup was talking about “objects being passed by reference”, another poster might say something like “Don’t let Jon Skeet hear you talking like that.”
• Play along with it, just a bit. Don’t blow your own trumpet, but equally don’t discourage it. A few wry comments to show that you don’t mind often go down well.
• Sooner or later, you will find yourself not just mentioned in another topic, but being the topic of conversation yourself. At this point, it’s no longer an inside joke that just the core members of the group “get” – you’re now communal property, and almost any regular will be part of the joke.

I think that says it all.

Yes, I like the attention of being a micro-celebrity. It would be ridiculous to deny it, and I don’t think it says much more about me than the fact that I’m human.

Yes, I like competing for reputation, even though it’s blatantly obvious that the figure doesn’t reflect programming prowess. It’s part of the fuel for my addiction to Stack Overflow.

I think it goes without saying that his reasons for helping people, because in the end that’s what it’s all about, is the same reason why the admins of LessThanDot.com created this site. Helping people is an addiction, it’s satisfying beyond believe. Does that make us idealists? Probably because we won’t get rich of it.

And yes we are just human and sometimes you make misstakes but we have to remember when we didn’t make a misstake and when we did actually helped someone. And sometimes we get bored with the questions with the easy answers, but other times you get humbled by the fact that you don’t even understand the question let alone know the answer.