Why is it so hard to build reputation on stackoverflow?? Can't upvote, can't comment til I get 50 reputation, can't ask for question clarification so I can answer a question except in a comment...

I think you get +2 for good edits, just make sure they add value.

Ooh thanks for the rep building tips! I'm kinda late to the game and that should help.

I recently earned the tumbleweed badge for "you submitted a question and no one cared" lol

Haha not sure if it's something to be proud of... ;)

@kheftel I got that badge on my first question, too. I'm not a high rep user, either.

If you have think skin and want to make the question better, you can ask on meta how you can improve the question. Keep in mind that people may be brutally honest (but *normally* helpful). This also can induce the meta effect, where you could have hoards of people down / up voting your question because it has more visibility. If you take that approach, I'd search meta first for similar questions that were received well, because some may misinterprete it as you just trying to get more attention on the question rather than improving the quality.

I felt that way until I started lurking the unanswered in the topics I'm most knowledgeable about. Found a simple problem (to me) that hadn't gotten much attention cause the OP had bad English. I ended up getting a 50pt bounty.

Yeah I need to find the right subforum to lurk I think