> As an infrequent SO participator, this is somewhat comforting to hear.
I'd assume that people who visit infrequently are better on average than those who visit often because it means you don't have to look things up. Why would you assume the opposite?
Uhm, I feel your reply is a little bit of a non-sequitur, or at least I'm having trouble following your line of logic.
The linked article says that people's self-reported skill doesn't seem to depend on how often they "visit" SO, which includes answering questions and commenting. Given that this data is from people who actually filled out a survey on the site, that automatically excludes a big portion of the people who are "just looking".
The reason I say it's comforting is because it weakly contradicts a worldview (one I dislike) where "good programmers are visible programmers", and people are often get judged by their blog-posts and their tweet-followers and their SO answers.
I'd assume that people who visit infrequently are better on average than those who visit often because it means you don't have to look things up. Why would you assume the opposite?