> A lot of time has been spent by developers trying to get points. There is a cost to that.
Agreed, however one answer will help many developers, which should more than offset the initial effort
> The site has enabled software vendors to slack off on their documentation.
Documentation has not deteriorated, in my opinion. In fact, a point could be made that it is now much easier for small vendors to have outstanding developer support through stack overflow. A lot of open source project use it as the main support line.
> It would be interesting to know what the global number for reputation points is. There may be a correlation to money saved.
It is probably correlated to the time spent on the site, but the money saved is certainly not related, as users don't gain any reputation by reading answers or simply browsing the site.
Agreed, however one answer will help many developers, which should more than offset the initial effort
> The site has enabled software vendors to slack off on their documentation.
Documentation has not deteriorated, in my opinion. In fact, a point could be made that it is now much easier for small vendors to have outstanding developer support through stack overflow. A lot of open source project use it as the main support line.
> It would be interesting to know what the global number for reputation points is. There may be a correlation to money saved.
It is probably correlated to the time spent on the site, but the money saved is certainly not related, as users don't gain any reputation by reading answers or simply browsing the site.