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Something about how mean people are with voting keeps it this way. It's just very hard to get a vote at all. I happened to get a gold badge today for 10k views

Something about how mean people are with voting keeps it this way. It's just very hard to get a vote at all. I happened to get a gold badge today for 10k views on an old question. Of those 10k people 17 decided to upvote.

ritchiea 5y ago
I suspect it's because so many people use SO for work. When I'm at work I'm not thinking about being a good SO user and upvoting a good question or answer, I'm focused on getting my answer and getting back into the flow of my work. On the other hand if I'm casually browsing twitter or instagram I'll gladly like posts that are interesting and there's no cost because it's recreation time.
- mikeywazowski 5y ago
  This person has freely put in the effort to provide a solution to a problem you have at work, and you can't even be bothered to click the upvote button? Also, maybe this is just because I'm just a forgetful idiot, but on numerous occasions upvoting has proven beneficial to me. I'll be searching for the solution to a problem and I find that I've already upvoted a question which relates to my issue - then if there's an answer I've upvoted, that's probably going to be the best one.
  - antifa 5y ago
    Can't upvote on SO without spending ??? hours farming karma. People start answers with "don't have enough reputation to comment, but in response to the other answer [...]". Left the only answer on several questions, probably averaging 0.2 upvotes per answer. My high priority work questions: mostly no answers, even years later. I wrote a self answer, years later one or zero upvotes. I ask a question with an example, the only answer "solves" the example and ignores the question, I self answer correctly when I figure it out on my own, years later no upvotes. Several questions I arrive from Google are closed without an answer, or duplicate to a completely offtopic question. Or it's an XY question where I still need an answer for X but I don't have the secret question Y. If you're not actively gaming SO for karma, it can be kind of a wasteland for anything but read only.
    - mikeywazowski 5y ago
      Oh yeah, if you don't have enough karma to upvote then I totally agree (especially if you've put in the effort). I was assuming that you had upvote privileges.
gk1 5y ago
Possibly related: SO requires you reach some number of upvotes before you yourself can upvote. When I use SO and try to upvote a useful answer I'm always reminded that I don't have the privilege of upvoting.
- rhizome 5y ago
  This is (part of) why I upvote anything even remotely helpful, explaining that some command switch does (or doesn't do) X, or syntax clarification, or even having the best formatted and/or written answer, asking a question I didn't know I had, and so on. I'm not a power SO'er, but I have some privileges and I do try to help the site be good. It's kind of like Craigslist for me in that random people like me are also the source of poor-quality and low-effort participation, one-sentence or obviously-homework questions. However, I do realize the structure of the site and the Ponzi-like nature of voting there makes the n00b experience difficult if you want points and privileges. But at the end of the day, question choice and moderation are the comb and brush of informative crowd-driven sites. That said, I assume there is plenty of action to be had if you're participating in cutting edge, new version, or new technology topics. Unfortunately that conflicts with the low-effort/homework population who I assume are constrained by their curriculum and so they have only C++ questions to ask. By that token I wonder how many questions even remain to be asked of common and popular topics like Java. It could just be that SO is "full" in certain topics. The way to grow an economy is to participate in the economy, but this acquistion is no doubt going to change things for me. I also speculate that there's a certain mindset that sees unmonetized ratings (or even points) as a market failure, which is what generated acquisition interest.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    > This is (part of) why I upvote anything even remotely helpful, explaining that some command switch does (or doesn't do) X, or syntax clarification, or even having the best formatted and/or written answer, asking a question I didn't know I had, and so on. I recall listening to the stackoverflow podcast and Jeff was asked about his threshold for upvoting. I recall he said he upvoted something like all answers that were nor spam. Since, people are trying to help for no benefit to themselves, so why wouldn't you at least give them that?
gus_massa 5y ago
As a rule of thumb here in HN, the number of visits of a post is like upvotes*100+50. There are a lot of lurkers. [In particular, I don't have an account in SO.]
- bredren 5y ago
  Is there public data behind this, or your estimate?
skinnymuch 5y ago
Not completely true. I’m active on SO and other stack exchange sites as a consumer and bookmark tons of questions. They sync with https://Larder.io https://Larder.io for me too. I can’t upvote though.
mr_toad 5y ago
I wonder how many of those 10,000 views were from logged in users? I’m guessing there are a lot of people who use Stack Overflow without ever creating an account.
MrFantastic 5y ago
It's gotten brutal. I was learning a new language last year and all my posts were downvoted out of the que.

ritchiea 5y ago

I suspect it's because so many people use SO for work. When I'm at work I'm not thinking about being a good SO user and upvoting a good question or answer, I'm focused on getting my answer and getting back into the flow of my work. On the other hand if I'm casually browsing twitter or instagram I'll gladly like posts that are interesting and there's no cost because it's recreation time.

mikeywazowski 5y ago
This person has freely put in the effort to provide a solution to a problem you have at work, and you can't even be bothered to click the upvote button? Also, maybe this is just because I'm just a forgetful idiot, but on numerous occasions upvoting has proven beneficial to me. I'll be searching for the solution to a problem and I find that I've already upvoted a question which relates to my issue - then if there's an answer I've upvoted, that's probably going to be the best one.
- antifa 5y ago
  Can't upvote on SO without spending ??? hours farming karma. People start answers with "don't have enough reputation to comment, but in response to the other answer [...]". Left the only answer on several questions, probably averaging 0.2 upvotes per answer. My high priority work questions: mostly no answers, even years later. I wrote a self answer, years later one or zero upvotes. I ask a question with an example, the only answer "solves" the example and ignores the question, I self answer correctly when I figure it out on my own, years later no upvotes. Several questions I arrive from Google are closed without an answer, or duplicate to a completely offtopic question. Or it's an XY question where I still need an answer for X but I don't have the secret question Y. If you're not actively gaming SO for karma, it can be kind of a wasteland for anything but read only.
  - mikeywazowski 5y ago
    Oh yeah, if you don't have enough karma to upvote then I totally agree (especially if you've put in the effort). I was assuming that you had upvote privileges.

gk1 5y ago

Possibly related: SO requires you reach some number of upvotes before you yourself can upvote. When I use SO and try to upvote a useful answer I'm always reminded that I don't have the privilege of upvoting.

rhizome 5y ago
This is (part of) why I upvote anything even remotely helpful, explaining that some command switch does (or doesn't do) X, or syntax clarification, or even having the best formatted and/or written answer, asking a question I didn't know I had, and so on. I'm not a power SO'er, but I have some privileges and I do try to help the site be good. It's kind of like Craigslist for me in that random people like me are also the source of poor-quality and low-effort participation, one-sentence or obviously-homework questions. However, I do realize the structure of the site and the Ponzi-like nature of voting there makes the n00b experience difficult if you want points and privileges. But at the end of the day, question choice and moderation are the comb and brush of informative crowd-driven sites. That said, I assume there is plenty of action to be had if you're participating in cutting edge, new version, or new technology topics. Unfortunately that conflicts with the low-effort/homework population who I assume are constrained by their curriculum and so they have only C++ questions to ask. By that token I wonder how many questions even remain to be asked of common and popular topics like Java. It could just be that SO is "full" in certain topics. The way to grow an economy is to participate in the economy, but this acquistion is no doubt going to change things for me. I also speculate that there's a certain mindset that sees unmonetized ratings (or even points) as a market failure, which is what generated acquisition interest.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  > This is (part of) why I upvote anything even remotely helpful, explaining that some command switch does (or doesn't do) X, or syntax clarification, or even having the best formatted and/or written answer, asking a question I didn't know I had, and so on. I recall listening to the stackoverflow podcast and Jeff was asked about his threshold for upvoting. I recall he said he upvoted something like all answers that were nor spam. Since, people are trying to help for no benefit to themselves, so why wouldn't you at least give them that?

gus_massa 5y ago

As a rule of thumb here in HN, the number of visits of a post is like upvotes*100+50. There are a lot of lurkers. [In particular, I don't have an account in SO.]

bredren 5y ago
Is there public data behind this, or your estimate?

skinnymuch 5y ago

Not completely true. I’m active on SO and other stack exchange sites as a consumer and bookmark tons of questions. They sync with https://Larder.io https://Larder.io for me too. I can’t upvote though.

mr_toad 5y ago

I wonder how many of those 10,000 views were from logged in users? I’m guessing there are a lot of people who use Stack Overflow without ever creating an account.

MrFantastic 5y ago

It's gotten brutal. I was learning a new language last year and all my posts were downvoted out of the que.