There is another factor that comes into play. QA sites like SO also blend in wiki and trust mechanisms. Thus, highly rated users can and do rewrite questions to be more answerable/understandable. They can also rewrite answers if necessary.
Without automated karma, the moderation function has to be granted manually which is a process that doesn't scale as easily and is subject to attack by cabals. That way lies wikipedia's dictatorship of the editor proletariat and associated drop in user participation. That is fine for a largely static knowledge base, but SO addresses much more dynamic topics in a way that engages the readership much more strongly. Moreover, the feedback cycle essentially guarantees that the moderators reflect the interests of the voting public. On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 5:47 PM, David Blevins <david.blev...@gmail.com>wrote: > Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow > tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with > the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier > archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as > plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. > > I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at > all when looking for the right answer. >
