More often than not the voting is based on opinion in addition to fact. Often the top answer is not only correct but cleaner, more elegant or adheres to some ae

More often than not the voting is based on opinion in addition to fact. Often the top answer is not only correct but cleaner, more elegant or adheres to some aesthetic quality that's valued by those people voting up the answer. In software there's many ways to achieve a goal, not a single unique factual answer, thus many answers are context-sensitive and not absolute truths. Sure we can determine to some extent the correctness of the answers, but many of them are contextual and based on factors that are based on opinion/experience. The voting system in and of itself encourages users to infuse answers with opinion.