On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 2:33 AM, David Virebayre
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.