How to get initial reputation on Stack Overflow with the new-user restrictions in place?

How to get initial reputation on Stack Overflow with the new-user restrictions in place?

• I understand that reputation can be gained by answering questions. However, it seems that more often than not the questions do not contain all the required information to give an answer. Since new users can not comment questions and ask for more details, this creates a sort of catch-22. Any good advice on how to get initial reputation, given the new user restrictions?

• Answer:

  50 reputation isn't all that hard to get, unless you're only knowledgeable in a very specific and isolated section of programming. Sure, that initial 50 reputation might seem like an insurmountable barrier, but it'll be gone before you know it if you do the following things: Write well-formed questions and answers — Do your research. If a question doesn't seem to provide enough information, you don't have to write a very specific answer. Research what could possibly cause the error and post as many solutions as you can. If your technical knowledge is lacking right now, post http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/18584/how-to-ask-a-smart-question. Improve Stack Overflow — Propose edits for answers and questions. Even if it's just grammatical or orthographical errors, correcting such things will improve the readability and provide better accessibility to other SO users/visitors. PROGRAM — Above all else, keep programming. It's easy to get into a rut just surfing Stack Overflow. Don't do this. You'll learn more programming by doing, which will expand your knowledge base for answering questions, and you'll eventually run into problems while programming, which will provide fuel for questions. Remember, when asking or answering questions, http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5280/embrace-the-non-googlers (unless it's a duplicate). Stack Overflow is to be the repository of programming knowledge, essentially the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_alexandria without all the fire and burning.