# What does a reputation distribution, and its evolution with time, tell us about a particular SE site?

Firstly, how would one obtain such a distribution and its evolution with time?

Secondly, what kind of inferences can be drawn from such a distribution? (I could try this, if I knew answer to previous question.)

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Interesting question, but a bit open-ended (at least its second part). But I would like to know the answer too. –  Piotr Migdal Nov 3 '12 at 11:02
The question of what kind of inferences can be drawn from such data strikes me as potentially limitless--I'm sure there are more possible inferences than one would care to count (most of them quite trivial). @PiotrMigdal has given you a good overview of how to get the data; you now need to develop a more focused set of questions. Note, however, that having data can help w/ that: you explore the data, especially (IMO) making plots, think about what it might mean, & repeat. Be sure to retain a hold-out set, though, or you'll never know if your potential insights are worthwhile. –  gung Nov 3 '12 at 12:26
@gung thanks for the advice. –  user13107 Nov 3 '12 at 14:33
For a graphical example of reputation time series data (and the code to produce it) please see mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/13705. –  whuber Nov 6 '12 at 17:46

To some extent SE measures such reputation distributions - see sites at Area51. For fresh sites, it count number of users with rep>=200, rep>=2000 and rep>=3000, just to see if there are both "normal" users (who ask or answer more than one or two questions) and some very dedicated ones.