I recently had a look at some feature requests regarding the review-queues and even made one myself. One thing that struck me as rather odd (and is not limited to my search) is the recurring suggestion to essentially "just get more reputation" to fix any issue for low reputation users (such as myself).
I understand that higher reputation-users might suggest that. After all, they did manage to earn said reputation points. Though from my view, there are some notable issues:
Getting more reputation might solve an issue for an individual, but the structural problem remains.*
Getting the necessary reputation will most likely take years as:
- Most low-hanging fruits have already been taken.
- Niche technologies reward expertise disproportionally low.
- Usage of Stack Overflow has dropped somewhat, leading to (among other things) less voting. (Though the size of this effect will have to be observed over a greater time.)
On more of a subjective level, sometimes this suggestion reads closer to a "git gud" remark.
Despite the above, this is a rather frequent response. So am I wrong, not seeing it as a solution? Is it a valid/good response?
* The counter-argument that perhaps there is no issue as only a few people have complained is weak from my perspective. Meta, due to its nature, is dominated by high-rep users in terms of activity, creating a sometimes skewed/biased view.