Are there any alternatives that actually let humans do this? Perhaps a site that employs some game mechanics? First to summarize, +10 points. Correction, +5 points. Request to summarize (bounties), +n points.
Sometimes if you give a good answer it will just sit there collecting points for all eternity. I did that a couple of times and I have several thousand points after a few years.
I haven't used the site in almost a decade, but I posted a few extremely valuable answers back around 2010 about stuff like how to redirect a request or round a number in SQL (/s), and over the decade these stupid answers have netted me thousands of points, keeping me in the top few % of site users. As the quality has fallen off and the main focus has shifted from programming to meta-pedantry I've completely stopped using the site aside from what links Google takes me to.
The points however, are extremely valuable still. Whenever I have a tricky problem, I can post a question with a large bounty and dozens of strangers from around the world will spend countless hours of their time doing research and writing up multi-page solutions completely for free. Of course half the time the act of writing out the question makes the answer obvious, but still.
Having said that, I still think the quality of answers was better 10 years ago than it is today even with a bounty.
As someone has already replied, you slowly gather passive points from your earlier questions.
My account is from 2009, with 33 questions, and 120 answers and 10K points. It's a tough estimate, but I felt like I received my money's worth, sort of speak.
However, bare in mind that contributing was significantly easier 10 years ago, hence why most of my points stem from older questions and answers.
reply