How about english.stackexchange.com/questions/111594/…

Side note - I hate that phrase. People who help on our sites do it because they like helping. Or they like showing off some knowledge that others can use. The points do give you a dumb way to "track", and they surely do motivate some people to pick one post over another, but the ones that draw the most rep usually help the most people. The idea that someone spending hours online helping others should be judged as doing it for unredeemable internet points, instead of assuming they like making a difference feels crazypants. (End of rant.)

@Jaydles Once again, a rant from the Comment-junkie.

Not only is @Jaydles correct about the nature of the person who spends time on these sites, it’s also worth remembering that the points are specifically designed to encourage the desired behavior. Someone solely obsessed with gaining points would, by the nature of the system, have to do exactly what we want them to do in order to get them. That’s why they are there and why they work. TL;DR: allow xkcd to explain

A person who gains internet points as a result of helping others, or showing off their knowledge, or just generally improving the quality of the site, is definitely not a rep-whore. To claim otherwise is meaningless. A rep-whore is someone who games the system in order to gain internet points regardless of whether it has any of the aforementioned benefits. To give a concrete example: repeatedly answering low-quality or duplicate questions, rather than trying to improve them, or voting to close them.

@ekhumoro, the challenge there is that you're assuming they share your view of what low quality is, or your knowledge of what dupes exist. So, when someone answers a question I would close, I tend to assume they're doing it for the rep. But it's just as likely that they just don't know it should be closed, or that they don't agree. Dupes are a great example - say I answer questions all the time that turn out to be dupes. Does it mean I'm only after rep? It might, but it might mean I just don't think I should have to hunt for dupes before I ever answer a question.

@Jaydles - The rep whores who irritate me the most are the ones who go around making meaningless edits to old questions, creating needless zombies. I don't understand why editing a question should earn you points like that.

@Jaydles. I'm not assuming anything, and it's got nothing to do with my personal views. Anybody who has used a site for a reasonable amount of time, and has gained the basic privileges, knows perfectly well how things work and what is expected of them. And even if they don't: ignorance is never a valid defence. Of course, everyone makes mistakes. But as in all walks of life, there must be a limit to how long we should tolerate repeat offenders.

@ekhumoro, first off: Sorry. That read as "you're doing," when I meant to say, "some people applying that approach risk...". Didn't mean to personalize it, or assume anything about you (especially while accusing others of "assuming"- oops). But I think we don't agree on what an answerer "owes" a site. My take is that if you come for an hour a day to answer, but simply aren't up for dupe-hunting, or have never studied what's off-topic, leaving that activity to others who care to do it... great. Part of what makes it work is that people should be able to pick how they donate time here.

@Jaydles. My original comment was mainly meant to establish that "rep-whore" only applies to people that deliberately and repeatedly game the system. You seem to be suggesting that such people don't exist, or are somehow not a problem. All I can say to that, is that it doesn't surprise me that you are not regular contributor to stackoverflow...

@HotLicks - Define 'meaningless' in that context - we already have a 6-character limit to suggested edits so that edits should be substantial enough/critical enough to warrant being made. And I don't understand why it matters whether the edits were made to old questions/answers: we aren't a 'fire and forget' community, we're actively trying to curate better quality questions and answers to boost the overall quality of the site(s).

@Robotnik - I'm talking someone who goes through and, say, inserts pointless emphasis and highlighting, or who messes with the punctuation (not in English SE but in SO, where Pist language is rarely seen). And, when you look at their activities, does this serially on a dozen questions. I've seen it many times. (And despite what some would like to believe, the world would be no worse off if 90% of those old questions disappeared -- many are foolish newbie errors, and you see the same error time after time.)

"Rep whore" can apply to more than just SE sites, ya know. There are lots of forums, etc that offer "reputation" or "karma" (or simply post count) based on posts, etc. In many cases, people with a high rating aren't necessarily being helpful, just talkative -- and some are detrimental to the community in doing so.

Didn't Jeff Atwood himself have a blog post or something about this? I think he compared them to Help Vampires- maybe he called them Rep Werewolves? My googling doesn't turn anything up, so I might be imagining this, but if anybody can find what I'm talking about, I'd be curious to see it.

Could we have a better term for politically correct? That term has such negative connotations for me, and many others, who view it as a phrase to describe what weaselly men do when they want to obscure their actual meaning, so as to remain liked.

@EricWilson. Yes: political correctness is itself a form of rep-whoring.

@Jaydles FWIW, I've personally seen very little rep-whoring on SE sites, although some has been pointed out to me. A rep-whore is not someone who spends a lot of time on a site with reputation points, it's someone who games the reputation system, giving the scoring of points more importance than the purposes it's meant to serve.

Come on guys. Gaining rep is of course a positive outcome from positive behaviour, but you're all missing the fact that this term — for better or worse — describes someone who will do anything (no matter how harmful or detrimental to the site in general, to the OP, whatever) purely for the gain of rep. The two are not at all the same thing! /cc @Jaydles

@KevinWorkman: Perhaps you're thinking of Mysticial's Meta post?

@jaydles On Math.SE a top 20 rep user had a sock puppet voting up his posts. Another top 5 rep user plagiarized many posts of other users. If that doesn't count as "doing it for unredeemable internet points" then I don't know what does. Having been there since the dawn of the site, it is clear to me that many users will do anything for more rep. In gamified models, rep is a drug, often highly abused, alas.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Exactly. This is the point that eludes most commenting/chatting on the issue. OP asked for less offensive term for specific category of users (not necessarily SE). I'd say there's no point looking for one (as my answer shows) as the "rep-whore" is rather elegant term in the context and situation. And I fail to see any tendency to generalize or broadening recipient base to include real helpful souls.

@KyleMit Thank you for asking this question...people who don't find "whore" in their day-to-day vocabulary would also like to describe this behavior ;-)

@Shokhet, I'm happy it got such a great wave of responses.

@KyleMit Yeah; I wasn't sure what I expected to find when I clicked on it in the HNQ (hot network questions) bar on the side of the page, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of good answers :)