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

Does stack overflow automatically increase the reputation points?

• My reputation on stack overflow suddenly increased by twice . Initially I had 26 rep points and within a day I had 78 . All my answers and my questions had been upvoted. Does stackoverflow automatically do this to encourage participation ? PS . I matched the graph of some other people and saw such sudden increase in points in their points as well .

• Answer:

  No, I don't think so. I am using stackoverflow from past 3 years (Actively,check screenshot attached). I have lot of friends who has lot of questions and answer which are never voted up (Total Reputation < 100). Never seen or heard anything like this on their accounts or even nothing like this on http://meta.stackoverflow.com How active I am on stackover in checking our questions and answers etc. Here is something you want to see. This is how reputation work in stackoverflow: What does Reputation do? As a registered user, your reputation on the site is a part of your identity on the site. It reflects, to an extent, your familiarity with the site, the amount of subject matter expertise you have and the level of respect your peers have for you. It can generally only be gained when other users of the site approve of the content you provide. Reputation also determines a user's privileges within the system. As you gain more reputation, the system learns to trust you and bestows new functionality upon you that low-reputation users cannot access. As users gain reputation, they gain abilities and responsibilities. The required reputation amounts on different sites can vary slightly; see http://meta.stackoverflow.com/privileges for specifics. Common privilege levels for new sites, public beta sites and "normal" sites are described http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/58587/reputation-requirements-compared. How can users gain or lose Reputation? Users gain or lose reputation based on the quality of their interactions with the system and other community members. The primary reason for reputation change is voting. Posts which are voted up increase their authors reputation; the reverse is true for posts which are voted down. Upvotes are more heavily weighted than downvotes. Posts which have Community Wiki status are exceptions to the reputation rules; they do not affect their authors' or editors' reputations. This is true http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/35928/2-on-accepting-answers-something-is-wrong-with-my-account-on-so/35930#35930. You gain reputation when: one of your questions is voted up/useful: +5 one of your answers is voted up/useful: +10 one of your answers becomes accepted: +15 you accept an answer written by someone else to one of your own questions: +2 a downvote on one of your questions or answers is removed: +2 you http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76251/how-do-suggested-edits-work: +2 (up to a total of +1000 per user) you remove a downvote from an answer: +1 one of your answers is awarded a bounty by the user offering the bounty: +full bounty amount one of your answers is awarded a bounty automatically: +1/2 of the bounty amount (see http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work/16067#16067 for details) you associate accounts of two or more Stack Exchange network sites, and at least one of those accounts already has 200 or more reputation: +100 on each site (awarded a maximum of one time per site) You lose reputation when: one of your questions or answers is voted down/not useful: −2 you vote an answer down/not useful: −1 an upvote on one of your questions is removed: −5 an upvote on one of your answers is removed: −10 one of your accepted answers loses accepted status: −15 you unaccept an answer written by someone else to one of your own questions: -2 you place a bounty on a question: −full bounty amount one of your posts receives five "it is not welcome in our community" flags (formerly known asoffensive flags): −100 Additionally: All users start with one reputation point. No user's reputation may drop below one point; if an action would cause a user's reputation to drop below one point, that user's reputation is set to one point (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2621/why-does-reputation-have-a-lower-bound-of-1). You can earn a maximum of +200 reputation from upvotes and suggested edits in any given http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/27199/what-is-an-se-day-when-does-each-day-start. Accepted answers and bounties are counted separately (http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/the-great-reputation-recalc-begins/). Reputation "lost" from the reputation cap is not awarded on following days. If a vote is cast before a post becomes Community Wiki, but is removed after the post becomes CW, the removal does not affect reputation (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/29088/downvote-removed-score-of-downvoted-user-unchanged). Before May 2011, downvoting questions cost the downvoter one reputation point (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free). Actions taken on deleted posts cease to affect reputation within five minutes (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123319/recent-reputation-history-changes). Accepting your own answer does not gain you any reputation. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19920/how-does-the-so-voter-fraud-detection-mechanism-work?rq=1 as a result of http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126829/what-is-serial-voting-and-how-does-it-affect-me will return lost or gained reputation. When everyone is at 1, where does the reputation start? There are two ways a new Stack Exchange site can be bootstrapped: Users come from another site in the network where they start with 100 reputation (if they have a linked account with 200) Users have their answers accepted or are the ones accepting answers from other users (+15 and +2 respectively) Source: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/7238/138975