32
votes
Rich get richer phenomenon on CV
Let's look at the data. First up is a plot of acceptance rates versus the number of answers, with a weighted GAM smooth superimposed (courtesy ggplot2). It shows $...
whuberMod
- 313k
32
votes
Accepted
Should we reduce the vote threshold for closing questions?
I'm all in favor of option 3: ask SE to lower the threshold for closing questions from 5 to 3 votes. (Importantly, the same should apply to the threshold for reopening a question. This is also the ...
- 115k
27
votes
Why do people downvote old questions and answers?
When a person in 2017 is looking at an answer that may have been written in 2010 (say), it's not that person's responsibility to try to figure out if the answer might have been correct at some time ...
- 275k
27
votes
Do answers with equations and formulas in them get more votes?
In short: I think that the bottom-line is that in terms of correlations, there is not a clear effect. It differs per user, and if we would scale the number of equations by the size of the post then ...
- 68.4k
26
votes
Accepted
Is it ever too early to upvote or downvote a question?
TL;DR
Vote early and often. Deploy your daily votes constructively to help people use our site effectively and well.
I'm sure people have different systems for reading posts and voting on them. ...
whuberMod
- 313k
24
votes
Accepted
Why do gibberish answers get any upvotes?
As far, as I can verify, it was me who made the upvote. Out of fun and out of curiosity. I also thought it was inconsequential since the answer will get flagged and removed soon and since I would ...
- 558
23
votes
My upvoting policy
I have been using a similar policy since our site was in beta. (I might have stricter minimum quality standards, though ;-), because we are mature enough that many new questions can be answered with ...
whuberMod
- 313k
22
votes
I get surges of upvotes, and they are lumpy in time. Is this because the site is surfacing my questions all at once, or do I have a stalker/superfan?
I can answer this from the perspective of someone who has given clumps of up-votes to users at various points in time, often for old obscure answers. As Tim correctly points out in his answer, this ...
- 116k
22
votes
Accepted
Downvoting a new member
Reputation never drops below 1 and previous downvotes are not accumulated to be applied afterwards.
Please note:
Downvotes help the system automatically block people who make a habit of posting bad ...
whuberMod
- 313k
21
votes
3-vote close - how's it going?
I've long thought we ought to close questions faster and grumbled that the burden on the small number of active, high-rep users with close-vote privileges was too high. I'd also support some other ...
- 17.2k
20
votes
Accepted
How can we discourage downvoting when inappropriate?
I have only a little to add to @NickCox's answer.
Down-votes do tend to be sticky, which is a pity when the down-voted poster makes the effort to improve their post. I don't see any reason to suppose ...
- 28.8k
20
votes
I get surges of upvotes, and they are lumpy in time. Is this because the site is surfacing my questions all at once, or do I have a stalker/superfan?
My best guess: someone found your answer that s/he liked, up-voted it, clicked your profile and found other answers s/he liked. There is no algorithm that bounces questions in clusters. What is ...
TimMod
- 134k
20
votes
Accepted
Is this platform losing significance?
Long-term members of the forum who are active in answering questions and particularly in sometimes voting to close or down-voting questions or answers that seem poor are -- in my overwhelming ...
- 53.2k
20
votes
Is this platform losing significance?
I feel this platform is for discussion: hence we are free ...
This is where you go wrong! See the Meta post Are Stack Exchange sites forums? which explains clearly that Cross Validated (as other SE ...
- 73.6k
19
votes
How can we discourage downvoting when inappropriate?
EDIT: Here is a summary added also in reaction to various comments (some now deleted).
Downvoting is not constructive (and not intended to be). It should, mostly, express a view that a post is not ...
- 53.2k
18
votes
Accepted
Why do people downvote old questions and answers?
Votes on this site are highly noisy and so over-analyzing one-offs like this is a waste of energy in my opinion (especially because the criteria for what deserves an up/downvote are completely ...
- 1,486
18
votes
Accepted
Should I upvote an elaborated answer which I do not fully understand?
Some users on this site feel compelled to provide input on things they don't understand and this sounds like a more nuanced version of that...Obviously you can vote however you want but, since you ...
- 1,486
18
votes
Accepted
Community moderating vs systemic attacks
To clarify: programming questions are not automatically off-topic here.
Instead, they are off-topic if they don't need "statistical expertise to understand or answer"; as we see under Programming in ...
- 275k
15
votes
Correlation between upvotes and effort
I'd agree that there is at best a weak positive correlation.
But what is effort? It's not just the effort that went into an individual answer. The effort of following the forum over a few years ...
- 53.2k
15
votes
Accepted
Correlation between upvotes and effort
I think there are several (confounding) factors here. The biggest, by far, is the number of views a thread gets. If no one views a given thread, there are obviously no opportunities for people to ...
15
votes
How to ask question that makes you famous and highly upvoted?
Include any XKCD drawing.
whuberMod
- 313k
15
votes
Is it ever too early to upvote or downvote a question?
Voting is an important signal, but for many askers only acts as a signal at all when given before they get an answer they like (because they then don't log in until they have another question).
If a ...
- 275k
14
votes
How to ask question that makes you famous and highly upvoted?
After actively observing CV for some time I'd say that the recipe for a question to get noticed and highly upvoted is:
Make it general rather then narrow,
Use a short, meaningful, but "catchy" title,
...
TimMod
- 134k
13
votes
Accepted
When do upvotes occur?
See this blog post I wrote for the CV site, Voting behavior and accumulation of old votes on CV (I know I need to work on my titles). As of 2012, there was non-trivial accumulation of upvotes for ...
- 15.7k
13
votes
Are new answerers feeling like they "speak into the void"? And can we help?
1. To what extent is this a common experience of new answerers? Do we lose noticeable number of potentially active participants this way?
I think I felt similarly when I started participating, and it ...
- 17.2k
12
votes
Help spread the wealth
The first clustering algorithm you will learn about is k-means. That is nice and good, but unfortunately people will sometimes think that k-means is the One Tool to solve all their clustering problems ...
- 115k
12
votes
Accepted
Does unanimity of reasons to close matter?
I agree that this is common.
I don't find it especially troubling on the whole. If a question is unacceptable on any ground, it doesn't belong. If you throw something out, it is secondary why you do....
- 53.2k
12
votes
Is it ever too early to upvote or downvote a question?
Do not agree with the position that very early voting is unjustifiable. It can be a reasonable voting pattern.
In many cases some questions show genuine research effort and/or tackle an very ...
- 42k
12
votes
Accepted
Do you have a right to downvote just because the question is not under your interest?
I'm sorry for any new user who has been discouraged in genuine attempts to ask a question. I agree there's a problem with what appears to be an amount of fairly indiscriminate downvoting.
If you're ...
- 275k
12
votes
Accepted
Is a sole answer with a down vote worse than no answer at all?
I assume you are referring to Determine if data is IID.
I see no reason you have to delete an answer just because someone downvoted it. In general, unless the downvoter leaves a comment explaining ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible