Was that line from Re (tilly) 1: Idea's?

As for the rest of what you say, other than this post, none of my posts have ever been designed to get me rep... :-)

Seriously, I am sure that some people try to get XP by various methods. "Karma whoring" was not invented on slashdot, and won't finish there. Here are things that I have noticed which could be used for that here. In general short quick answers to problems goes well. So can long meta discussion about PM. Talking about posts in chatter can get them voted for. And posting heavily is generally good because some votes inevitably fall your way. People prefer ++ to -- and it shows.

But when I began looking through my posts sorted on quality I noticed that the top reputation posts generally are much better. Quality is generally rewarded. But it is quality by somewhat different standards than I would have applied. I personally value most posts that clarify some general point about how to think about programming. But people may vote something up because it is funny or illustrates an obscure point. In general it has to have a reason why it is liked.

And yes, there are some posts I really like which never did get voted up. For instance RE: (tilly) 2 (possibilities): interchanging variables the tough way. But they are harder to find than I would have intially guessed.

Perhaps this explains why, when I look at the top posters, I see that most of them (counting myself) got there by trying to be helpful and contribute good stuff. So even though the system is abusable and will be abused, it seems to work pretty well on the whole...