[Haskell-cafe] the beginning of the end

[C. McCann]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 2:33 AM, David Virebayre
<dav.vire+haskell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Level 5
>
> I'm out of layers here. I think this is all there is to it.

Level 5 is after you've spent way too much time writing questions
and/or answers that people like and have over 10k "reputation". This
unlocks some basic moderation tools for helping deal with spam and
other problematic content. SO is a largely "community-driven" site,
rather than having a bunch of moderators appointed by the
administrators.

There's also other things that some people track, like weekly scores
and per-tag rankings. For instance, I'm apparently SO's foremost
expert on "lazy-evaluation" and "typeclass", and the only user so far
to get a tag badge for "monads". This is obviously a very significant
accomplishment.

But seriously, it's mostly just a medium for providing Q&A in a
structured, searchable way. In fact, you missed the most important
part by far:

Level 0:
You have an unresolved programming problem. You search the web for
information and the first Google hit is a question on StackOverflow
that describes your problem exactly. You look at the accepted answer,
find that it has the solution you need, and go on your way in a matter
of minutes.

- C.