Is gaining rep based on SE content ok?

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.

posted almost 3 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

3y ago

Monica Cellio‭ staff

64 372 2259 828

Do you have specific examples of this occurring? If you don't wish to call folks out here feel free to join our chat server and message one of the moderators or admins privately. We will not tolerate instances of abuse.

Otherwise... the vast majority (maybe all?) of imported material came in with a score of zero. Any "rep" gained here will be based on the CD community's judgement of its merit; a good answer will be up or downvoted on its perceived contribution, rather than on any historical value it may have held. If users are posting good answers, they should gain trust in the community from those good answers.

Please also be aware the the "rep" system should soon be replaced with the trust level system where users gain privileges based on overall perceived positive contribution. A single answer with high upvotes may not be as important in that scenario.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Sigma‭ staff

3 14 58 15

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?

What you mean is that people basically could loosely copy content from elsewhere giving attribution if necessary. That new content was not already existing here but gets highly upvoted and therefore generates lots of reputation.

I'm not sure if it's a problem but copying (even adapted) content from elsewhere surely is rather a repetition and does not add much to the overall existing amount of knowledge. Therefore it might be a bit of a waste of time.

Then again, if it's highly upvoted, it means that it's very useful, so probably something we would want to encourage. We want lots of highly upvoted ontopic questions.

We probably couldn't prevent ontopic questions derived from content stored elsewhere unless we insisted on absolutely original questions every time, i.e. questions that are new not only to this network but new to the world as a whole.

That touches on what Codidact or the communities that form Codidact actually want to achieve? Be an even larger library of knowledge than already existing elsewhere? I couldn't yet find information about that and will probably ask about it one day.

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

Looking at software development CD it hasn't really happened on a large scale. It seems that even though it is not a big amount of work, it's still not very appealing to users.

My take is: Reputation is supposed to be less important here, so we do not really need to worry about that. The real worry would be needless duplication of content, but if people want to spend their time doing that (and give proper attribution if needed), why not. The content itself always was free and not thought to be stored at one place only. But on the other hand, search engines seem to think that one canonical place for each piece of content is kind of enough (they wouldn't have to, they could also just randomly alternate between all existing copies of an information).

Therefore it does not need to be encouraged, but also not really suppressed. Indeed for a selected number of Q&As it may as well make sense (the most often used ones as they will be asked anyway and are ideal duplicate targets). There is a kind of gold rush opportunity out there for the early adopters of Codidact to create lots of highly useful knowledge, but then without reputation, all you would get is the sense of having helped somebody else.

If I have some free time, I'll try to do a bit of that, at least asking some of the more important questions, but I don't need any reputation for it. I'm happy if other people read about it and find it useful.

posted almost 3 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Trilarion‭

7 19 105 55

I think that each sub community has to decide this independently.

Codidact's vision was created with the bad experiences on SE so naturally there are a lot of users who were (or are) regulars there. It's highly likely that now still many if not all users know Stack Exchange and participated somewhere in the network.

I for one am happy that we didn't import anything for the site where I contribute the most (which is Cooking) as I have no affiliation with the original site and didn't provide anything there. So a blank space offered me and anyone else to contribute from the start while knowing that questions and answers originate from Codidact. We therefore build up this community from scratch.

On the other hand, we have communities where power users have migrated here as well (Scientific Speculation, Judaism) so they do have a legitimate interest to import questions and answers as they have poured in significant time and work. As they know a lot of the imported content, they can navigate it, knowing somewhat precisely what's has already been asked and answered. So while these communities start over from scratch too, their situations are different as they bring in knowledge.

Basically, this less a general policy question and more a community question with policy-related effects. Communities should nevertheless carefully evaluate if they want to truly start from scratch or bring in existing knowledge and content (and be confronted with the mentioned effects).

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Zerotime‭

31 15 215 6

Is it a problem if specific users harvest highly-voted questions on SE, then self answer, to farm a huge amount of rep?

Eh, maybe, but it's not important enough to spend much time thinking about. If they actually add new content here, then I don't see a problem with it.

Ideally, rep here only comes from activity here, not from imported data. I can see how that might be difficult to implement, though. When importing a question, you probably want to preserve the votes on the answers that show which ones are good and which ones bad. It doesn't seem worth extra code and bookkeeping to treat imported votes differently.

The much bigger problem is all those posts from long ago showing up here. I remember seeing a new question on Photography or Scientific Speculation here, reading a couple of pages, then realizing down the bottom that this was asked and answered 3 years ago. Argh! Thanks for the wasted of time. I've been downvoting such imported questions ever since.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Olin Lathrop‭

46 122 342 122