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Has anyone else noticed that seeing a question with 0 votes is becoming common?

Seriously, we need to get our act together. If you like a question, or in particular, feel a question asks a good question that could be beneficial to other users, vote up! If a question is completely irrelevant, or formatting/spelling is so bad it is completely unintelligible, vote down!

It drives my crazy how many questions get absolutely no attention! And this includes answers too.

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I certainly have, and in the past have said that more people should vote.

I 100% agree that as a whole our site should be voting more.
However, I can not agree with your reasons for UVing or DVing.

After reading the voting pages:
Why is voting important?
vote up
vote down

It is abundantly clear the voting should not be based on some whim, or whether or not you liked the picture, or if the guy is famous on this site.

Vote up:

Whenever you encounter a question, answer or comment that you feel is especially useful, vote it up!

Vote Down:

Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.

(quotes form the respective SE help pages linked above.)

Bottom line, yes vote more (don't be afraid to max out your daily limit.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to say, I just didn't get there. $\endgroup$
    – MasterHolbytla
    Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 23:22
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Speaking for myself I don't upvote question very often. It's not because I'm bitter, or in some personal vendetta to withhold points from other users; nor because I don't read them or don't care. I just think upvoting a question should be reserved for actually good questions.

Most questions that show up here show absolutely no effort from the user, no research, incomplete information, poor language (I know many users first language is not English but the worst offenders often seem to be native speakers), walls of text, duplicate questions asked over and over again; or the large majority very simple or very basic beginner questions.

Not sure if this is correct from my part but, the most frequent reason I do not find a question upvote worthy though is because most just seem too localized or specific to the users project or work, and with very narrow applicability outside that very question.

Not that the question is bad in and of itself, doesn't justify downvoting either, but it feems like using SE as a personal helpdesk, rather than a long term knowledge database, making them unlikely to be useful to anyone else.

I would consider the best questions to use the most 'generic terms', like 'how do I solve general problem X' or 'how to achieve certain effect Y'; instead of 'how do I do specific thingy from my project' or 'how do I fix my problem in this screenshot'.

Now I rarely see a question getting closed for being Too Localized, and since this is very large majority of questions here, if we don't answer those BSE would quickly become a pretty empty desolate place, failing the basic mission of helping users; but I just don't find those questions upvote worthy either.

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    $\begingroup$ Surely if a question leads to a great answer (like so many of yours ... probably all ... all 8^)) it's worthy of at least one UV? My policy: there's a distinction between a 0 to 1 upvote, eg "this q is worthy of an answer" and UVing above 1. Voting IMO fuels the site. $\endgroup$
    – batFINGER
    Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 8:43
  • $\begingroup$ My guess is the numbe of up votes ends up reflecting the question quality after all. I also think we have such talented and knowledgeable senior users here that even mediocre no effort questions some times get fantastic well constructed answers after all. I will try to upvote more often then. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 12:16
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    $\begingroup$ Especially if the question has passed the "Spanish Inquisition" (aka review)... hmmm someone said not to mention that. $\endgroup$
    – batFINGER
    Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 12:53
  • $\begingroup$ in the some cases what you described I would DV. Now I'm using my own questions as examples, just because I'm familiar with it them. How do I rig a BB-8 robot? is a very specific and rather localized question (how many others are going to make a BB-8?), but I think it is a well formatted, clear and answerable question. All three are reasons to UV. Now What is the warp modifier for? is a still specific, but is more general. So you would UV this one, but not the first? $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 20:30
  • $\begingroup$ Would never go as far as downvoting, as I said I do not consider them as a bad questions at all, but I do tend to regard more general or 'generically asked' questions as well formed and more useful as future reference. It's probably just even a simple matter of wording. For example 'How do I rig a BB-8 robot?' could probably be worded as 'How do I rig a fixed object on top of a rolling one' or something along those lines, so it still poses a great and useful question. Then again thinking about it now one is more likely to search for "bb8" than what I wrote... I may be wrong, I dunno :) $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Aug 5, 2016 at 2:00
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    $\begingroup$ Upvoting questions helps new users to feel welcome and appreciated and might come back. Having more points will help those new users access comments and other moderator tools. We all started from zero. If a question is clear and answerable I will upvote it. $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Commented Aug 6, 2016 at 19:01
  • $\begingroup$ @cegaton would like to edit that to: Upvoting questions helps all ... $\endgroup$
    – batFINGER
    Commented Oct 3, 2017 at 10:34
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The Blender Stackexchange might have a lot of users (18k) but I strongly believe that most of them are

  • one-timers
  • people who have never used stackexchange/overflow before,
  • and of course people who don't vote on answers where they aren't sure if they are actually good, because they haven't yet entered that area of Blender's big exciting world.

One-timers don't bother to choose a user name, some even don't bother about learning how to ask questions. They drop in, ask (well... more or less) whatever they want to know maybe receiving an answer after endless comments about improving their question and then they are gone (that also becomes a trend irl). Certainly they don't bother with things like "how does StackExchange work", "what are the customs here" or "maybe I can participate as well".

People who have never used SE/SO might accustom to things like voting or even accepting answers. If they visit more frequently one might drop them a line and they actually might have enough interest in that little red box with the number, that pops up under "recent inbox messages".

The people who aren't sure if the given answer is actually a good one might vote, if they stumble over the same task somewhere in the future and find the answer then helpful.

I for myself have no problems with votes (I don't even have a facebook account). What troubles me, are the many many questions that actually received a good answer but that answer was never accepted. Those questions will get pushed up by the Community bot every now and then until they get "flagged" as unanswered and because of that they might disappear.

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    $\begingroup$ I agree with you! (neither do I have a fb account) To correct your last point, a question with a good answer, even though it is not accepted, is not an unanswered question. Any question with just 1 positive vote will never be removed by the community bot. $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 21:49
  • $\begingroup$ David, thanks for clarification. I recently found an older question that really helped me with one of my tasks but had 0 votes on it. Of course I upvoted but then I feel that there are more of those in the drain... I also was referring more about the upvotes of my answers... $\endgroup$
    – metaphor_set
    Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 21:54
  • $\begingroup$ @metaphor_set you're right, according to BSE 18,471 of our users only have between 1-199 rep. Only 1,095 have more than 200 $\endgroup$
    – Unnamed Sentient Being
    Commented Aug 6, 2016 at 0:32
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I'm here because I'm a Blender Bumbler who staggers through Blender's amazing array of settings, and quite frankly don't feel qualified to "Judge/vote" another's question or reply.

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    $\begingroup$ So while staggering, you never found a useful question with a useful answer then? I doubt that. It's not about your current level of qualification, it's about how qualified you are after reading an answer that was actually helpful to you and your task. $\endgroup$
    – metaphor_set
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 19:16
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    $\begingroup$ I didn't even suggest that I'd not found posts or replies useful. $\endgroup$
    – Edgel3D
    Commented Aug 13, 2016 at 7:28
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    $\begingroup$ @Edgel3D (replying to your comment) you kind of did suggest that you did not find any posts useful. To quote the reason for up voting "Whenever you encounter a question, answer or comment that you feel is especially useful, vote it up!" So whenever a post helped you, vote it up. $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 20:56
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks to these comments David I have been up-voting since, in order to signal to the poster that his/her effort was helpful to me at least. As for your interpretation, what I said there is plain enough. $\endgroup$
    – Edgel3D
    Commented Aug 29, 2016 at 2:42
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I'd love to vote but my reputation is below 15. I assume a portion of others might be not voting because of the same problem.

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    $\begingroup$ Only a small portion of active users are below the up vote privilege. There are about 8465 users with 15 or more rep. PS don't worry you will gain rep quickly. $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 20:53
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People give many votes, but often (too often?) to comments. And I think it's Q's and A's that should be voted up or down. That's the goal of this site, isn't it? I suggest voting for comments should be abandoned. If it can't be done, downvoting should be enabled to discourage folks from going too much into commenting. And comments could be highlighted as the font used is small. The other day I answered a question and then I saw it was "answered" in the comments.

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