ad_on_isWhen's the last time you asked a questions on StackOverflow?
Never. IIRC, I also couldn't upvote good solutions because I had never posted or something, though I may be mis-remembering.
This was my experience as well. They seemed to angle the system away from the casual user, which I didn’t have time to sit around and answer questions to get enough fake internet points to interact more.
Yeah, it sucks. In the cases where it was really helpful, I couldn't upvote the answer that helped me solve my issue (usually with some more poorly-documented library or something).
You can however always accept the answer, which is similar and pretty helpful
Kissakifake internet points
Your take is a valid one, but not very fair.
Points are a reputation system. People who are contribute and provide quality get increased trust and power.
It’s not “fake”. It’s a designed system of points with meaning.
Some of my saltiness comes from the fact that I tried to answer questions a few times, but told I wasn’t worthy enough to participate in the conversation, and so I was confused by the system. Also, I saw people answering with lots of points, but their answers were trash and I couldn’t impact that response/point gathering, and just made me think it was just another gamified system, and engineers love to game a system. :)
If that were really true then they would give users with 100k rep some benefit of the doubt when it comes to questions… but nope. Still get closed as “too vague” by people who haven’t even heard of the thing you’re asking about.
At least that’s a testament to neutrality - in a shitty way.