54
votes
Why do simple answers get more positive feedback?
One thing to consider is that it is rather reasonable to only vote for answers where one is actually confident that they are correct.
For for more complicated answer the pool of potential voters is ...
- 42.5k
47
votes
Accepted
Low reputation users with a lot of ghost votes
Absent any evidence of wrong-doing, we must assume that users are right-doing.*
As long as a user has 15 reputation on this site, they are free to upvote as they wish (provided they are voting for ...
- 52.6k
47
votes
It’s become difficult to see visually if I’ve upvoted a post
This is not an A/B test - those happened a while ago and it has now been rolled out to all sub's. There has been a bunch of stink raised over it on https://meta.stackexchange.com/, but then that seems ...
- 11.2k
41
votes
Accepted
Why favorite but not upvote?
An incomplete list of reasons why one might track a question:
to delete them later.
to check if they get deleted.
to check if they stay closed.
to see if maybe they get turned from something ...
- 42.5k
41
votes
Accepted
Why did this answer get an upvote?
Unless the upvoter chooses to come and answer this question you're asking people here to read minds -- it's unlikely anyone can do that for you.
People upvote wrong answers for a variety of reasons: ...
- 6,363
37
votes
Why do simple answers get more positive feedback?
It's the same reason that detailed essays will never get as many upvotes as cat memes on social media.
On the internet, people consume content primarily in a browsing paradigm. Quick and easy content ...
- 27.3k
30
votes
Accepted
Has the upvoting really gone down?
Is this really happening or is it just me who feels that?
In relative terms, yes, this effect is real. However, it is not that users stopped voting. In absolute terms more votes are cast. The issue ...
- 42.5k
24
votes
Accepted
Unfair up-voting of high reputation, not having a special answer
First of all, I used to be often frustrated by this phenomenon myself. I would post answers similar to (well, better than, IMHO) those of other users with much higher reputation, only to find my ...
- 52.6k
23
votes
Low reputation users with a lot of ghost votes
For the first example, the specific user in question is a very well-known SE citizen. He (going by the image) is not known for tolerance of poor quality and non-sense, quite the contrary. And, he ...
- 42.5k
23
votes
Should I up-vote to a useful question/answer that has received enough up-vote?
When you see good quality content, vote it up. If and when you run into your votes limit for a month straight, you can start thinking about dividing your voting attention to new or old content.
One ...
- 399k
23
votes
Accepted
Which posts have a high value of $\min(\text{upvotes, downvotes})$?
As already mentioned, this can be done using SEDE.
The posts with highest $\min$(upvotes,downvotes): main, meta
You can also modify the query to include some additional information about the post (e....
- 54.6k
22
votes
Accepted
Why is the number of required close votes constant?
Votes do not just accumulate, they can "age away" and how quickly actually depends a bit on the number of views.
Moreover, questions with many views often are disproportionately viewed by ...
- 42.5k
21
votes
Accepted
When do we upvote or accept an answer?
While I'm not the most active on this site, my experience on other SE sites would suggest a simple piece of advice: upvote answers that are helpful, and downvote answers that are harmful. You get a ...
- 3,539
21
votes
It’s become difficult to see visually if I’ve upvoted a post
For the moment (given that it is highly unlikely the buttons will be modified soon), you can use a script to roll-back to the usual buttons.
For the sake of completeness, here's the full script which ...
PedroMod
- 123k
17
votes
Which posts have a high value of $\min(\text{upvotes, downvotes})$?
This information can be obtained from the Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE).
I have almost no experience with SQL, therefore I took the existing query Most controversial posts on the site and ...
- 119k
16
votes
Why do simple answers get more positive feedback?
Have you ever had a word limit on an essay? It's not because markers are lazy. It's because brevity focuses the exposition. You may have also noticed short questions are favoured, as long as they're ...
- 117k
15
votes
Better attitudes towards voting
I'd like to write about just one concrete point raised regarding consequences of downvoting: should we pull punches if we think the recipient would react negatively?
I don't think so
It is a good ...
- 157k
14
votes
How many upvotes are too many?
Agree with everything quid said. Just adding a few observations.
Voting old answers is very much ok. As long as you find them during "natural" browsing of the site, like following an interesting ...
- 137k
14
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to downvote a deleted post?
No one.
But you need to differentiate between downvoting a post, and an upvote being invalidated. Accounts get deleted all the time for various reasons (e.g. self-deletions), and when those accounts ...
- 399k
13
votes
Closing a poor question as off-topic or as a duplicate?
I am promoting my comments to an answer, as this came up again in CURED again today.
My flowchart is as follows:
Is the question of sufficient quality to keep on the site?
Yes. Go to step 2.
No. ...
- 30.4k
12
votes
How do some seemingly easy questions get hundreds of upvotes?
I think most people who upvote don't do it to reward the asker, or to vouch for the quality of the question.
They think, "yes, this is a question that I too would like to see a good answer to", and ...
12
votes
Unfair up-voting of high reputation, not having a special answer
As you suggest, one reason why robjohn's answer got more upvotes than yours may be that he has a lot more rep, and is a familiar face to many people on math.SE. Both of these facts may cause some ...
- 26.4k
12
votes
Why isn't there enough time to change our opinion?
Yes, I think it is enough time. You should make up your mind first and vote only then. If you cannot make up your mind, do not vote.
Note also that if the post should change, then you could in fact ...
- 42.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Should we be able to downvote comments?
In a sense, there already is a way to handle such comments: flag the comment.
If the comment literally says "Your question is stupid, dude", flag it as "It's unfriendly or unkind". ...
- 5,525
11
votes
Cancelling an Upvote (Downvote)
Once you vote on a question or answer you have 5 minutes to undo or change your vote. You can undo an upvote by clicking on the upvote arrow again and likewise with downvotes. After 5 minutes your ...
- 27.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Can we know who voted on our answer?
No, this is not possible. See e.g. this post on Meta Stack Exchange: Is there a way to see who voted on your posts?
No, voting is by design anonymous. Not even ♦ moderators have access to information ...
- 3,955
10
votes
Accepted
Why can only established users view vote counts?
You have to remember something about the SE model. It is a for-profit private company. Their goal is essentially to be the #1 result in search engines whenever someone types something that ends with a ...
- 55k
10
votes
Where can one find data on users' voting?
Data explorer is a good tool to find various statistics about SE sites. You can find various already existing queries ordering users by percentage of downvotes.
I took this query and modified it to ...
- 54.6k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible