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Comments on Is gaining rep based on SE content ok?

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Is gaining rep based on SE content ok?

+9
−0

Is it a problem if specific users harvest highly-voted questions on SE, then self answer, to farm a huge amount of rep? And if so, what can we do to prevent it?

I haven't seen it happen, but asking this question on a coding site seems like a pretty straightforward way to guarantee yourself a lot of rep with minimal work.

Even if this hasn't happened yet, I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen in the future.

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General comments (3 comments)
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+7
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I realize the question is more about harvesting and reposting others' work here, but there's a special case of reposting I'd like to address. (For the general question, see the other answers.)

Sometimes it happens that you've written an answer you're proud of somewhere else, whether SO or Quora or Reddit or wherever, and you'd like to be able to bring it here. To bring it here you'll need a question to attach it to, so, as suggested in the question, you might think about copying the original question with attribution.

I would much rather see people in this situation take a different approach. Re-ask the question in your own words. And it's ok if the question isn't exactly the same question, because you're making it yours. Then, after copying your answer (self-answering is just fine), try to improve it. You've probably learned things since you wrote it (or you adjusted the question in some way that requires changes). Make a good, solid, Q&A contribution here, ideally better than the original. There'll be no question that you earned the rep that follows.

I can't remember if I've done this here on Codidact, but I've done something similar when collecting some of my answers from elsewhere onto my blog. I didn't find it too difficult, and I was happier with the result than I was with the original post.

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The question seemed to be about questions & answers not written by you. As in, what if someone took... (2 comments)
The question seemed to be about questions & answers not written by you. As in, what if someone took...
Janar‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

The question seemed to be about questions & answers not written by you. As in, what if someone took top 100 questions from SO, copied them here, credited the original author and answered them with accepted answers from SO crediting the answers' original author

Monica Cellio‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

Janar‭ oh, good point. Yeah, that wouldn't be very helpful, and I think the other answers already cover that. I think it's probably still useful to have something here for the special case of your own work (it's come up before), so I'll make an edit to cast this more as a sub-answer.