CrossValidated's rather extreme up-voting problem

Question

Users have pointed out that it is very difficult for beginners to comment on questions, see this thread. These users particularly seem to emphasize that it appears Cross Validated has separate policies regarding comment permissions compared to other stackexchange sites, even though this is actually not the case. The problem actually appears to be that it is much more difficult to get reputation on Cross Validated than it is on other stack exchange sites, because people don't vote as much, as can be documented in this thread.

It is extremely frustrating for a generally trusted stackexchange user to not be able to comment on the answers to questions or even be able to ask for clarification on other people's questions. Could this be addressed by giving reputation a bit more generously or perhaps doing something else. Maybe saying something on the sidebar like, "please up-vote all well researched on topic posts even if you don't feel qualified to do so (it is especially important that you up-vote reasonably worthy newcomers, as their participation is greatly inhibited without up-votes)". The point is, we are all able to tell whether a question is well researched, a duplicate, or reasonably on topic. Down-voting is a bit different you should be qualified in the subject at hand, but our users should feel comfortable up-voting anything they think is appropriate.

We really need to do something about the lack of up-voting in our community. This answer to a previous thread really strikingly uses stats to show just how much of problem voting is. Looking at the first 50 posts on the main-page right now, I see 14 net up-votes given with shockingly 1 up-vote being the max given for a single post!

Other things we could post on the sidebar is (note there may be some disagreement on this suggestion) "You should up-vote every question you answer". The reason for this is that you should not be answering bad questions anyways because (1) it prevents the user from deleting the question and hence decluttering the site (note that bad question clutter makes it difficult for users to tell if their question is a duplicate), (2) It can easily be stated in a comment, (3) It encourages users to ask more bad questions (the main reason question askers come here is to get answers not rep).

Answer 1

CV's a democracy of a kind, so many standard political points arise. The first lessons in politics include learning that many other people are very confident in telling you should be voting this way or you shouldn't be voting that way. Excuse me: they're my votes, or not. Within the rules, I vote as I like. (I don't impute or infer attempts to offend, naturally.)

Here are some of my views:

1. I won't vote for anything I have not the time to read.

2. I won't vote for anything I don't think serves the long-term interests of the forum.

3. I won't even necessarily vote for anything I think is worth answering or commenting on. Sometimes, indeed often, the question is lousy, but it is worth trying to produce a good answer for the sake of the forum.

4. When people want to focus on how or whether reputation can be enhanced, their emphasis is in the wrong place.

CV is a success, mostly, but I think the central problem remains one that is more or less inevitable and has been pointed out many times. Many questions are really rather poor. They suffer from one or more of

a. The poster's weak understanding of statistics.

b. Excessive focus on immediate details (e.g. a particular data set or a particular research question) which reduces the general or long-term value of the question.

c. The poster's lack of effort in learning or reading.

d. The poster's failure to understand how CV works best. This can even apply to people who have been on the list for some years, yet ask the same vague, cryptic or over-general questions, or the same kinds of questions, again and again. Some of these people are seemingly indifferent to the evidence that they are way out of line (as shown by voting, answers, comments).

Of these, a is often the main reason the question is being asked and b is the way it arises. So, these weaknesses are understandable but they don't often lead me to feel that an upvote is deserved. c is even more of a reason for not upvoting. Conversely, d is a reason for downvoting!

On the whole, the tone of CV is frank yet civil and positive, and that's a good thing. But there is a certain timidity about very firmly discouraging outlier posters and/or removing very weak questions.

There are many strong technical questions too, naturally.

Answer 2

Some personal thoughts/methods about this important issue: voting.

1- Voting on answers:

In this thread, Peter Flom gives an answer about the low answer ratio that was found/audited in CV (at that time):

"...I think that is partially a function of the nature of statistics and the questions we get..."

Many users agreed with him and I believe this reasoning of thinking also applies (up to a certain level) to voting. Statistics is not that trivial to most of us mortals.

There are times which I read an well formatted answer but can't vote for it because I lack background to understand its content.

If I partially understand an answer, but there are comments of trusted users saying it is a good reply I am also inclined to vote for it.

As far as possible I try to contribute by voting for correct and trivial answers under the following situations:

1. It is the first answer in a thread and it does have none or few upvotes;
2. It adds something different from other existing answers and it does have none or few upvotes;

Important to say is that generosity has a limit. Correct information always need to be preserved so we can keep the site's credibility.

2- Voting on questions:

Now about questions I do a lot of voting. Like to think that if I am spending my time to read a question my "null hypothesis" is initially to vote for it, unless it does not follow the site's guidelines (poor formatting, duplicate, etc.).

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Despite we already have here a mixture of friendly environment with good professionalism level, I agree we can improve on encouraging more users to actively participate here (voting, answering, asking, editing, chatting, flagging, etc).

I hope you keep helping us on this task from now on.

Answer 3

I think a decent compromise to the SE upvote famine is the following: edit confidently and often, downvote uneditable posts or remove them early and often.

On editing: The poster is responsible to ensure both that their post is of top quality and that the substantive question remains correct. Very few new posters put the requisite time into asking a high quality question. If quality editing compromises the latter, then the poster needs to correct the editor. I've often imputed large amounts of context, inventing variables and study settings, to make a question readable and contextually appropriate.

On downvoting/removing: we are at odds with making a community usable for beginners and keeping our quality up. Cluttered low quality posts are a huge issue here. As far as statistics are concerned, I'm curious whether we take overly dramatic (or not dramatic enough) action to remove irrelevant posts.