<p>According to the FAQ to up-vote questions you have to have 15 reputation points. Easiest ways IMO are:</p>

<ul>
<li>asking a good question (+5 per up-vote and +2 when you accept an answer)</li>
<li>editing questions (+2 until you reach some reputation threshold)</li>
<li>answering a question (always the chance that you come across some low-hanging fruit - or you could always look at old unanswered questions)</li>
</ul>

<p>Long story short - ask one (or two) well structured question(s) about <code>R</code> or some other statistical package on SO and you will meet that small of threshold. I only marginally participate on SO as well, but I follow RSS feeds for the statistical package tags and will answer if I have a chance (and no one else already has). It is a good way to see stat programming in practice IMO.</p>
