I just want to be able to participate

Question

I find it frustrating that I cannot vote anything up or comment on anything unless I ask a question. I don't know how many answers and comments have helped me from this site, none of which received any feedback from me due to this.

My question is, will you vote this question up if you agree?

This will also have the side effect of allowing me to participate in the future.

Answer 1

You are the user we would like to have!

Since you have always found a solution just searching, it means that you are correctly following the Third van Duck's Rule! :):):)

And since you would like to upvote, it means that you know our way to say: "Thank you!"

Hence, you are a perfect user.

Please try to answer a question, we will be happy to upvote your post and make you earn the privilege to upvote!

Answer 2

While I agree wholeheartedly with CarLaTeX, I believe this is important to say. Not too long ago I found myself feeling similarly to you, pf4d. I have found that one of the most important pages I have read on this site is this one. This is for 2 reasons:

1. "Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you": I, and many others like yourself, have been using LaTeX for ages and solving our own problems before we join this site. However, that knowledge hitherto potentially not shared, cannot simply be trusted based on our relatively anonymous word. We must take the time to join in the community, share our knowledge, and help others to grow as we have. You may find, as I have, that we end up learning and growing more ourselves than we were before. Then our reputation demonstrates our trustworthiness.
2. "We don’t run this site. The community does.": Everyone working together, sharing information, and learning is what this site was based on, and what makes it keep going. Join the community! We're happy to have you here!

Some suggested actions to take:

• Finish reading the entire What is reputation? page that I'm talking about.
• I have found that editing questions and answers is a great way to start gaining rep, and to help others. Some people do not speak English as a first language, and it can really help everyone to improve the spelling or grammar.
• Answer questions when you are able. Share that awesome knowledge that you have.
• Engage in community discussions like this one to grow your understanding of what the goals of this community are.
• If you have not already, read the tour page to get better acquainted with what you can do to help out and gain rep. You get a badge just by reading it!

I hope this helps, and I hope that you decide to keep participating :-)