Although I have a degree in computer science, the reality is that I'm still fairly novice in many aspects of the field. I am not specifically gifted in any area that StackOverflow covers, which makes me only useful in more remedial questions (which are quickly answered anyway). I suspect many people fit this same mold in some regard.

However, I gain a LOT of help and direction from StackOverflow, and would really like to "give back" to the community in some manner. I am not interested in developing reputation or any specific public recognition, I'd just like to help in areas that don't require advanced skills I lack.

Question: What can I do to help the community (regardless of reputation or other rewards)? What tasks would it be useful to have a guy that isn't especially skilled, but is willing to help?

TL;DR: Are there any tasks I could do within StackExchange that would take work off of more gifted community members, allowing them to help more people, even if they offer no "reward"?

  • Related (geared toward gaining reputation rather than helping the community, but some answers may apply): meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254885/… – xtraorange Aug 5 '14 at 22:09
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    Remember the objective is a database of questions and answers. Each well-written question that is on-topic and not a duplicate is a valuable contribution. – Patricia Shanahan Aug 5 '14 at 22:19
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    Members like you make it feel worthwhile for us moderators to deal with the... others! – Andrew Barber Aug 5 '14 at 23:14
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    Open up the close votes queue to him :D – Twelfth Aug 6 '14 at 0:22
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    @Twelfth more importantly, the suggested edit queue – codeMagic Aug 6 '14 at 1:32
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    Edits and low hanging niche fruit. There are quite a number of posts made by people who don't bother looking up the doco for the library giving them trouble. But at some point, we novices have to just accept that we aren't particularly relevant on the supply-side and so must simply try to not get in the way of those who are. – BSAFH Aug 6 '14 at 4:22
  • @Twelfth - the irony is that I've now discovered the places that need the most help are the ones I can't access without more rep. Apparently I need more rep so I can do jobs that don't give rep, ha ha. – xtraorange Aug 9 '14 at 1:45

Review queues and flags

You have access to certain review queues you can also flag posts, and all other privileges to <=500 rep users.

Any and all of these are helpful so long as you are doing them correctly and as needed and not just for the sake of doing them.

Learning from the site and other users

I felt the same way when I first started using SO so I answered more basic questions when I could but I also would look at some that I didn't know about but looked interesting. In doing so, I gained a lot of knowledge by researching the question asked.

I also learned a lot by watching users in my tags of interest. You can distinguish the users who really want to help the site and others from those who just want all them imaginary points. I saw which ones I should emulate and learned from them on how to handle answering question.


You also can suggest edits when you see issues with posts. You can suggest an edit to make it much more helpful and understandable. This can sometimes make the difference as to if the question gets closed or not and how helpful it is to the community. Unfortunately, you can't review these yet but you sound like the kind of person we want reviewing suggested edits. Just make sure you read up on what makes an edit helpful and there are plenty of meta posts about how edits should work.

Love meta

By looking around here on meta and participating (asking, answering, commenting) you will gain a lot of knowledge of how the community expects users to behave. This is something I came in late on and so I wasn't always doing things properly. Now that I've spent more time here, I've gotten a better understanding of what I should do and when (some things are fuzzy and always changing it seems).

Everything is awesome

But it's nice to see someone wanting to help the community instead of complaining about rep and how horrible we all are

  • Thanks, I had actually missed the review queues (I was aware of some other reputation based unlocks, but never came across that), and your other advice was very helpful. I'll leave it open for a bit to hear other thoughts. – xtraorange Aug 5 '14 at 23:12
  • @xtraorange I just added a section about suggesting edits. Doing this correctly can be a big help, also. No problem with leaving it open as long as you need. The more responses the better for everyone. – codeMagic Aug 5 '14 at 23:45
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    @codeMagic. Love the last answers. This community does resemble the Lego movie somewhat (minus the conformity :P) youtube.com/watch?v=StTqXEQ2l-Y – snowbound Aug 6 '14 at 1:32

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