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I notice some users with very high reputation scores. What is their "trick", and how can I increase my reputation?

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  • To some extent by association bonus. It's not much, but important in the start, and the user will likely benefit another community in the process.
    – Pavel V.
    Mar 9, 2016 at 19:56

4 Answers 4

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The trick is providing quality answers to questions.

Or more specifically:

  • Providing detailed answers that are easy to understand
  • Asking questions that are well-written and include plenty of information
  • Accepting answers to your questions

You can find more information here.

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    Once you get enough reputation to write comments, it's also useful to comment on existing answers, e.g. if you think they are good but can be improved with additional info.
    – JanC
    Oct 17, 2010 at 1:48
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1. Ask Good Questions

Firstly, ask good questions. Good and thorough questions are more likely to be upvoted to increase your reputation. When you ask questions you learn to, so you can help other people on the site with similar problems.

2. Edit Tag Wikis

Secondly, edit tag wikis. This is something that anyone can do with access to a search engine and some time on their hands. Adding descriptions to tags that don't have descriptions already will help you further understand Ubuntu and help other people to learn about terms that they don't already know. You can edit tags by clicking on the "Tags" link in the top navigation bar.

3. Leave Helpful Comments

Thirdly, leave thought-provoking and helpful comments. Don't be so critical to the point of being annoying. Leave a comment if something needs to be clarified, this will help the asker of the question so that the people who are trying to answer further understand the problem. Don't leave comments saying that the asker did a good job on their question, instead, upvote.

4. Be an active user

Fourth, be an active user of the site. You get badges for leaving so many comments, upvoting so many times, visiting the site for so many days in a row, etc. For more information on what badges you can get for doing what, go to the "Badges" tab in the top bar. Read other people's questions and maybe they will help you learn something.

5. Give Detailed and Easy to understand Answers

Fifthly, Give quality answers to questions, Try to give answers after you actually do researches with them, tested them or at least confidence with them. Try to give instructions as clear as possible. Give several options for answers, if they exists. And Revise your answers as new information arrives. Also, always keep in mind the questioner's knowledge level with Ubuntu, so give answers accordingly.

Conclusion

You earn privileges for gaining rep. The more rep you have, the more stuff you can do. Remember that the FAQ says that "reputation is a measure of how much the community trusts you". In real life, building up trust takes time. Gaining a high reputation is going to take a lot of time and effort. Take some time and read through the whead the FAQ for some more ideas on how to gain rep and use the site appropriately.

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    IMHO answers should be number one.
    – Melebius
    Jun 13, 2017 at 11:43
  • You are right, almost all of my rep on Hardwarerecs comes from answering
    – Irsu85
    Aug 26, 2022 at 8:31
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I've been following recommendations from this discussion on meta.stackoverflow to formulate my answers.

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  • One doubt How do I programatically increase askubuntu reputation? Can you provide a quickly template for it ? :p
    – Tachyons
    Jun 16, 2012 at 2:39
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Unfortunately the most efficient way to farm XP is to rephrase existing simple answers on easy questions while the question is still hot. Long detailed answers on difficult questions are not worth much because too little people are interested in them.

Edit: This is based on my observation on StackOverflow. There is, however, one important difference between StackOverflow and AskUbuntu: SO has so much traffic that questions only stay on the front page for about 10 minutes after the last answer.

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    Actually most of my rep seems to be coming from my older, more detailed answers. Oct 13, 2010 at 23:21
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    I feel the main trick is the audience of the answer. I have gained load of reputation for very general and easy question that I just have the luck to be the first to answer. I have won just a +1 and accepted rep in some answers that take a lot of work but that seen to interest only me and the asker. Anyway I learned a lot with it and had fun, I value it quite more than some values in a random database in the net ;). Oct 18, 2010 at 9:42

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