Stack Overflow and the 'reputation'
July 5, 2016
If you have tried your hand at programming using any language, you most certainly have heard of Stack Overflow. It is an indispensable resource. I have learnt a lot through the answers on this site. I have contributed a lot of answers on the site as well.
One thing I started to notice when I started getting sucked in into the race of gaining ‘reputation’ is how much of a persons’ ‘reputation’ is over-valued. On so many cases, there are more apt answers with clearer explanation than the one that is accepted. And more often than not, an answer is accepted solely based on the ‘reputation’ of the person answering. Even I started having a bias towards answers by the person with the highest ‘reputation’. I needed a way to go through the answers and comments objectively. So I built an extension (for Chrome) that strips out all the user related information about the person asking a question or answering a question. It certainly has helped me weed out unconsious bias on the site.
Use it and let me know your experience with it.