It's also encouraged to answer your own questions. So if you struggle with something, and find a solution, you can post the Q and answer at the same time even. To make it easier for others in the future.
Yup, the incentive is there to state your problem as clearly as possible to get back a good response. By doing this I answer my own question half of the time.
"But all my attempts to ask questions were unsuccessful."
Sure. But all the times you had questions that were answered on stackoverflow even before you asked them on Google, you were successful.
And by answering your own questions on SO you're helping out the next guy.
Post your question hoping you'll get an answer, but recognizing that you probably won't, and that you'll probably come back 24 hours later and post an answer to your own question.
You will accumulate karma for these, slowly but steadily. But more importantly, you're helping out those who follow.
I consider the time that I give to the community answering questions to the best way to help. While I have no idea how to value that in dollars, it's something I put an effort into regularly.
Despite all the problems itemized here, I answer questions, or post comments, when I have experience with the issue. Reason: many of my questions have been answered by other stackoverflow contributors.
I'm a serial SO self-answerer. I write really in depth, complicated questions for complicated problems, with code, data and testable cases - and by the time I've finished the question and posted it - I've figured out the solution - or I'll have it a few hours later.
I usually just leave the question/answer online so that others can benefit for it.
I'll post my question then continue trying to solve it myself
I also do that aswell. But it's a bit annoying when, within 10 minutes, my (unanswered) question is the top google result for the problem (due to high keyword relevance).
I usually answer the difficult questions because I've been googling how to do the same thing, found an unanswered SO question and eventually worked out how to do it myself. May as well post the answer.
I have mostly build my reputation (but it's only in three digits) by asking questions that were meaningful to my problems at hand. And sometimes answering my own questions later.
It may be amusing, but it's a feature of SO. When you ask a question it gives you the option of answering it yourself. This is so you can share the solution to a problem you have solved in case anyone else has the same problem in the future.
- Any answer I put there will be available via Google in 5 minutes, so I can definitely reference it myself in the future. (I'll even ask and answer questions I just figured out so that I can find them later.)
I think this is key. I answer questions to help other people. I also answer them to help improve my own ability to explain solutions to programming problems. Usually the problems are ones that I myself have dealt with before. I tend to answer questions pretty late, in a few relatively low-view tags, and I can tell from the view counts that maybe 10-50 people at most ever read any of my answers. But usually the asker of the question sees it and finds it useful enough to accept it.
My main issue, with the main Stack Overflow site (rather than some of the other stack sites), is that I don't get answers to my questions, possibly because no-one knows the answer. If they did, then it's probably been asked before, and since I always look first, I've found the answer to the question that was asked, and so don't eve pose the question, though I might contribute to the answer I found in some way.
Doesn't matter. You can answer your own question immediately after posting it if you want. It's designed to be a collections of questions and answers, not a forum, and so it doesn't matter who answers what question.
I've done it casually on various games or forums simply because when you use the communities sometimes the effort it takes to make a quick helpful comment is worth it. If you're already participating in the community then often times the notoriety of helping others is enough to keep you going. Other times I feel a slight obligation to give back to users who helped me in the first place.
I find that answering questions on SO or some other forum, is actually a good way to get smarter about a topic. Or just keep sharp. So it doesn't have to be an all altruistic effort.
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