53
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 ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
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 ...
- 51.8k
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 ...
- 9,700
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 ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
40
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: ...
- 6,250
39
votes
Is voting on questions getting harsher?
Interesting. Moderators have access to certain analytical data not present in the 25K site analytics (25K only). Part of this is up-/down-vote data on questions (and answers). Below is a graph showing ...
- 51.8k
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 ...
- 26.7k
35
votes
Accepted
Upvoting on previous questions
[...] would it be considered bad form if I were to upvote it (as they would receive a random notification for an answer they wrote a few years ago and most likely forgot)?
It's good form to up-vote ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
32
votes
Accepted
Can we be nicer to downvoters?
It disappoints me that the admission
I don't explain my downvotes anymore because I get abused when I do so.
and the subsequent plea
Can you all be nicer to downvoters so that we don't feel ...
- 15.2k
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 ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
27
votes
Can we be nicer to downvoters?
This question is the logical equivalent of "Can we be nicer to the tax collector?" We certainly need the tax collector so that we may function as a society. Without the tax collector, we lose the ...
- 138k
25
votes
Discrimination against PDE questions?
I think that you suffer from a case of specialist's myopia. As I may have also been diagnosed with it let me elaborate.
The calculus (or elementary number theory, not to mention high school level ...
- 131k
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 ...
- 51.8k
23
votes
Accepted
Is this targeted voting?
I often read through a user's profile page if they post a lot of great answers. I want to upvote all of them, because they are all good.
Is this targeted voting?
Yes, at least in the sense the system ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
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 ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
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 ...
- 390k
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....
- 52.9k
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 ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
22
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
- 121k
20
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 ...
- 3,509
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 ...
- 109k
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 ...
- 115k
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 ...
- 152k
14
votes
Can we be nicer to downvoters?
This is just a comment too long to be a comment. Judging from the above comments and the linked threads, I don't know how well this will be received. I might even get downvotes :)
Yes we probably and ...
- 43.2k
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 ...
- 131k
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 ...
- 390k
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. ...
- 27.4k
13
votes
Why a question without showing any work is getting upvoted?
I have other reasons not to upvote that question, but I would not downvote or vote to close it either.
The official reason for closing many a question is "off-topic -> missing context". Some users ...
- 131k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible