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Oh yeah, definitely. Especially on Usenet. You'd get flamed for asking a "stupid" question. You'd get flamed for using a "stupid" technology. You'd get flamed for doing things the way you did them, even if they worked just fine. I recall it mostly being constant flaming and hazing.

If I recall, there are actually a number of things you can do to get rep besides questions and answers. You can edit a post (with more than 6 characters), you can do a review, you can flag a post for moderator attention, and I think even your first up-vote gives you a point or two. (Some of those might award badges instead - it's been a long time and the rules sometimes change.)

I feel like SO can't win no matter what it does. It has some limits, like requiring at least 6 characters before an edit is deemed useful to stop it from becoming a breeding ground for "grammar nazis" and other similar types. If they didn't do that, people would complain it's overrun with grammar nazis who don't focus on the actual code being posted. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

You can often find the people more knowledgable on a particular subject in one of the other stack exchange sites. (For example, a problem with OpenGL or Unity might be better asked on gamedev.stackexchange.com, or computergraphics.stackexchange.com.)

I find this disingenuous. It is a very common scenario that a new user knows of some way to solve some part of their question (or just thinks they do), and assumes the best/easiest/fastest/safest/whatever answer involves using that technique. This is exactly the scenario that Alex Papadimoulis referred to in his blog post[1] that I have to believe was the inspiration for his site The Daily WTF[2]:

> "A client has asked me to build and install a custom shelving system. I'm at the point where I need to nail it, but I'm not sure what to use to pound the nails in. Should I use an old shoe or a glass bottle?" >...[potential answers] >b) There is something fundamentally wrong with the way you are building; you need to use real tools.

The answerer is often telling the person, what you are trying to do sounds like a really bad/inefficient/ineffective/whatever solution. The common way to solve this is Y because of reasons A, B, and C. Are you doing something where those reasons are not a concern?

[1] https://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/408925 [2] http://thedailywtf.com