On the paucity of voting

Question

paucity

ˈpɔːsɪti

noun the presence of something in only small or insufficient quantities or amounts. "a paucity of information"

The active community on Server Fault is tiny, most people come here to ask questions not answer them. Voting is allegedly the lifeblood of SE.

This question is directed at the active members - people who spend time reading questions, answering them but largely not voting.

I see lots of correct answers with 1 perhaps 2 upvotes and a checkmark - most of those votes will have come from the OP (upvote and checkmark).

I see people editing questions and answers for typos and formatting but they don't bother to vote on them even though the answer is correct and has a checkmark.

Today (29^th June) is day 180 of 2014. As of now only 10 people have (on average) voted more than 5 times per day this year. Most people have voted somewhat less than that.

So why is that ?

Why don't you an active member of Server Fault bother to vote on people's answers¹?

What can people do to make you want to upvote their correct answers ?

1 _{I've mostly focussed on answers because I can understand not voting on questions, they are largely, poorly researched etc but don't get hung up on that.}

Reference: User Voting Records for Server Fault

Answer 1

Why don't you an active member of Server Fault bother to vote on people's answers1?

I guess it's this:

• I usually only view questions I personally care about, which by the time I wade through all the stuff that's not a favorite tag but shown to me anyway isn't too many. At this point I'm already pretty disengaged.

• I usually care about questions which I find interesting also.

• I usually find them interesting because I don't know the answer myself.

• Which means I can't really upvote the answer as I don't know that it's correct.

Sometimes I'll enter questions I know the answer to and upvote the correct answer or drop an answer myself if no one else has, but only really when I actively decide to do a spell on SF. The majority of the 3-4 times a day I drop by I'm looking for interesting questions on lunch break, or before / after hours. In those instances the non-favorite tagged questions just obscure anything I cared about in the first place. I believe there's a specific url you can use to filter that stuff out, but that's roughly about the point I stop caring and just go onward to the next website.

I guess that personally SF is a place I primarily come to for learning. Answering and helping people is a nice side effect, but the main reason I'm here is to see the answers to things I didn't already know and try and gain knowledge. That gravitates me towards answers I can't actually upvote.

Answer 2

I've made 682 votes so far this year, roughly about 4/day. However, I've trailed off considerably over the last 2 months, both in voting and in activity.

For reference, I asked a similar style question here last year: Sure, we like the IDEA of voting, but we are poor in our actions

as a follow up to: Is ServerFault doomed? Not if we all vote more!

So to answer your actual questions for me:

Why don't you an active member of Server Fault bother to vote on people's answers?

Overall, I try(tried) to. But I also tend to only vote on answers that I actually know something about and can agree that the answer should (or shouldn't) work for the OP. Which is different than my voting style for questions, which is based more on the content, wording, and overall value of the question here on SF.

So, what's changed? Well, honestly it's a combination of not being as active on the site itself over the last 2 months, as well as a sort of lack of motivation/incentive to vote period. It's not a "what's in it for me" attitude, but the focus for me on SF has been more through active participation in the Comms Room then it has the main site.

What can people do to make you want to upvote their correct answers ?

Well, I don't think the people that are answering the questions can really do much of anything. My motivation to vote or not vote isn't necessarily based on the answerer but on the answer itself. Yes, I do tend to upvote answers from well-known members, especially if the Question/Answer comes up in the chat room, but the deciding factor is more along time/self-effort to even look at the Q&A main site. When I have time for SF, I either do it in the Comms Room or on the main site. Often chat wins out. If I'm on the Main site, I will first look for questions I can answer, then look at questions, then look at answers. Often always in that order. Selfish? Possibly...

Here's where the site involvement frustrations lie, IMO. You have a site that uses voting/points/badges as incentives/fun. Good enough...and most people will gravitate to something that even appears to be handing out points/awards/etc. Take away the voting/badges/chat/privileges/etc. and the site becomes very dry and almost certainly would become a giant question dump with very few active "answerers" sticking around just for kicks.

So, what's the answer to the riddle? No idea...we've discussed it numerous times and I don't know if there is a magic formula. Site marketing, fresh users, points contests, the funny little things like the unicorn points, etc. all get tried here and elsewhere, but often they are only temporary boosters if that.

Answer 3

I know you're not talking about me, because even though I've been busy/distracted/absent much of the past two months, I'm still #1 for the year.

There've been previous questions about this but not focussing on answers. My thoughts (on why it's EASY to vote and most of you are doing it wrong!)

• Up and down voting on answers mean: this answer is or isn't useful. An outright wrong answer usually isn't useful, but I have no problem judging an answer to be useful even when it's about technology I don't use much. My simple test is: do I understand the answer and does it tell me something?

• Given the huge steaming piles of crap that come through as questions, the best way to find good questions and answers to learn from (and to vote on) is to read questions that high-rep users have answered. AFter reviewing, I can easily use up the rest of my votes on answers by high-rep users (and, often, the questions they've answered)

Answer 4

Heres my frank answer(s). I'm not by any stretch suggesting these are reasonable answers. But, thats how content consumption goes on the internet.

Questions

1. I've seen so many of the same question (or thereabouts, or it doesn't interest me).

2. I see a question that has potential but I want it to 'fill out' a bit more before I upvote it. Then promptly forget about it.

3. The question is poor. I can basically deliver harsher 'justice' by close voting it, plus there is no cost to my magic internet points.

Answers

1. I'm spiteful that someone got there first.

2. Sometimes I can behave like a freeloader when in autopilot.

3. The answer is 'obvious' or 'not creative', typically unremarkable.

4. Like most people -- I find it more difficult to praise than to criticize, especially when you've seen many of the same questions posted.

I am more inclined to upvote an answer which is well formatted and easy to read.

I never downvote answers and very quickly you learn not to do it. The only people who tend to answer are regulars and they become very confrontational if you downvote them. Its not worth irritating your peers because they will likely remember that when it comes to upvoting me on an answer later on. The 'active' community is small enough that this is actaully something to take into consideration.

Resolutions

1. I need to stop being a lazy selfish whore on the internet. I should actually upvote questions and answer more and make an effort to do so.

2. For the most part I focus on the questions that interest me and forget to upvote the ones, that -- whilst possibly well written -- I just forget about.

3. Dont count it against me if I downvote. Its free to flag and vote to close, sometimes a 'hint' by downvoting is likely a better way to do it, but that comes at a personal loss to my magic internet points.

4. Give me a tab of 'questions you recently viewed' so that I might go back to the ones I checked recently.

5. In all of the review queues, give me the opportunity to upvote and downvote. The close queue does not let me do this. Its stupid because it almost forces me / encourages me to close vote things.

6. I actually prefer the review queue 'view' where I go 'next', 'skip', 'do nothing' etc even for standard questions, rather than being barraged with lots of questions at once. All the activity on the main page often makes me feel like I have to rush around the questions being offered to find one I feel I can give proper attention to. Given a full question without my screen real estate being hampered by lots of other questions actually allows me to focus and evaluate a question on its merits/downfalls more and perform some action against it.

7. Get the chat RSS feed to start recommending me questions. I'm more inclined to take more of an interest in questions that are recommended to me than have to put in mental effort to find a question that is of interest to me.

Answer 5

I voted!

I voted 565 times and counting this year. That's what, 4 times a day? It's close to your (arbitrary, I think and mean without offense?) threshold of 5.

I recently introduced a coworker of mine to stack overflow's voting system by cajoling them into answering a couple questions, seeing that they got enough rep to upvote, and then compelling them to upvote every answer they found in their erstwhile programming-heavy days.

I'd do the same for our sysadmin, but I think it might not be a useful activity, since if I'm right they have voted just over once a day on this very site. Perhaps they could click the up arrow a little more on things that helped them in their daily grind (on both the question and the answer!).

And there, we get to the crux of it. I review. I like this site and I like the more active members of it. But, day to day, I don't feel too strongly about the things that keep getting asked here.

If I find an answer good, or a question insightful or generally useful, I will upvote it. However, I'm not going to read through repetitive questions on basic things, or read Q&A about things I am never likely to encounter in my somewhat atypical work, just for the sake of validating correctness. I want something more out of it too: to learn something useful. So, I vote on the Q&A that gives me that, and I vote (usually down) in the review queue where allowed.

Answer 6

Some reasons why I don't vote.

• I don't vote on duplicate content.
• I don't vote when the question/answer is poorly written or formatted.
• I don't vote when the issue is overly specific and does not contribute meaningfully to the broader community.
• I often do not vote when there's already an accepted answer.
• I don't vote on questions or answers that are readily available in official documentation.

I basically see voting as recommending an answer to a user where the question has been unanswered.

Also I tend to spend my efforts trying to answer unanswered questions. As such, voting in this context is often not required.

Answer 7

I actually vote less since I took up the diamond. I thought I did, and the numbers do bear it out.

So, I don't vote on:

• Questions I don't understand
• Answers I don't understand

I also don't usually vote on:

• Questions I'm hammering closed
• Any post I'm deleting outright

As there seems to be little point.

I do try to vote on questions that I find interesting; if it interests me enough to try to research it, or even post an answer, then it almost certainly deserves a vote. Up most of the time; on rare occasions such a question gets a downvote.

I also vote on answers that I'm relatively sure are good, or from which I learned something.

For me, one big issue is that I spend a good percentage of my time on SF reading, closing and deleting the crap that most of you would rather never see. I think I have less time for reading questions for my own edification.

---

If you want me to vote on your stuff, you first have to get me to read it. That's the hard part. I seem to read very little of what's posted on SF these days, unless it gets flagged... Then you have to get me to not want to delete it outright and nuke you from orbit to be sure. After that it's just write a good question or a good answer that I know enough about to be able to make a judgment call on.

Answer 8

Personally I've only ever voted for answers which I thought were really good. If its marked as the answer, why vote? Its the answer, the poster has accepted it as the answer, why would I say any more? If I see a response and I think 'hey, now thats clever, that would never have occurred to me' or the response has saved me a lot of time, then I would vote. Its kudos for being a really good answer, not a 'yeah, that looks like the right answer' vote.

In real life you wouldn't recommend a brand of beer to everyone you meet just because you drank a glass, no? Its beer, its ok, but unless you think its outstanding you don't recommend it.

Answer 9

You guys also have to check the status of the question/answer. Once it has been edited too many times, it will automatically turn to community wiki and voting will no longer have any effect. At least that's what happened in the past, dunno if it has changed now (since I haven't followed it so much recently).