ekhumoro

@David good luck, and i hope you enjoy the race. i'm afraid i'm already burned out after getting a measly ten hats :)

@David wow - people really take it that seriously? when i looked at the leaderboard on the 14th, i saw one user (can't remember who) with seventeen hats. i wondered how the heck they'd managed that. seventeen hats in less than two days - and someone had the gall to accuse me of being desperate...

@Stephie well, i try to do most of that all year round, anyway (apart from the questions). i never seem to get anywhere near the full set of hats, though. some of the criteria for awarding the hats seems very artificial

@Stephie so it would be unseemly :) it suppose it's nicer to just wait for hats to come, without trying too hard to get them. i sometimes wonder how some users always seem to get all the hats every year, though...

would it be unseemly to ask someone to expand my cosmic brain?

@Riker indigochild, Stephie and daniel.neumann have "mother of dragons". i think it's awarded for a first post with a certain number of upvotes - 3 maybe

yeah, I need only 100 more votes on this answer for a gold badge. (just sayin')

@DavidPostill. upvoted. would you mind returning the favour by visiting this question?

@rumtscho. thanks. 4/5 now, I think

@rumtscho. please just visit the link

ps: still need some more clicks for an amped up hat. can anyone else oblige?

I don't remember my comments being closely grouped. they were over a period of an hour or so, I think.

@rumtscho. How many comments on questions have you posted today? Have they prompted any edits? I got mine on my sixth comment, following an edit.

@iYoung clicked

@X-27. Much obliged :)

@redstarcoder. Done, and thanks!

@Videonauth. Thanks

please amp me up

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

@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...

@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.

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.