>> >> You think voting helps you get the right answer; I think it's arrogant and rude that someone else tells you what works best for you. >> WHAT? You ask a q

>> >> You think voting helps you get the right answer; I think it's arrogant and rude that someone else tells you what works best for you. >> WHAT? You ask a question because you want help and don't know what works for you. How is answering that question arrogant and rude? (Voting is also an special type of answering mechanism). >> Sometimes the most voted answer may not solve your problem, but tell you that what you are trying to do is wrong. I think the votes let you know which of the solutions to consider before trying out any of the solutions. Yep, sometimes people up vote things which miss the point of questions (as originally intended) but generally they don't and even when they do (a) the information therein is interesting and useful and (b) the answer is probably of interest to anyone else with a similar problem who might want more than a single opinion on how to handle things. Surely a fundamental part of these sites is that the person originally asking the question is only one potential user of the answers and others will look at the information after them? The advantage of SO is that it allows you to see two things (1) what did the original questioner think most useful and (2) what does the community think is the best solution to the problem. The original asker is coming from a real world problem / solution perspective which is great but may have specific reasons for accepting an answer which are not stated in the question and are therefore unclear to me. On the other hand the community judges on only what's there and because it's the voice of many is less likely to be skewed by single specific factors. But ultimately as someone reading the question after the event both of these are useful to me. Worst case scenario is you have to review two answers not one - the highest voted answer and the accepted answer. To me that's a very small price which is almost always rewarded with better information so I'm very happy with it. As for thinking that others voting (essentially contributing their time and experience to read an answer, check it against their knowledge and experience and say "I think this is a great point which is worth reading") is rude and arrogant then possibly he should extend that view to those who are so rude and arrogant as to think they could possibly answer your question. They're both contributions to helping people solve their problem as quickly and well as possible and are basically the same thing.