5

I have noticed that recently, almost every single question and answer has received one upvote.

However, the purpose of upvoting is to differentiate between good and bad posts.

It is in principle good to upvote questions, and rewarding quality answers and questions. This is where the serial upvoting is lacking: Answers that lack references or are simply totally wrong, questions that are off-topic are all receiving upvotes. This distorts the purpose of voting: to differentiate between good and bad posts.

So please stop upvoting for the sake of upvoting, take time and consider whether other users should see this question because it has good quality and is on-topic, and if this isn’t the case, don’t upvote.

You aren’t doing yourself, the site or the owner of the upvoted post a favour by this serial upvoting.

9
  • 2
    Agreed, thank you SO much for writing this! It's a huge problem when we're working so hard to refine the site. The way you phrased the title of this q could've been a little unclear to some, so I slightly edited it so it is more direct, and restated the purpose of upvoting. It was so good it needed to be said twice. Please revert if you don't like it!
    – DoctorWhom
    Commented Sep 22, 2017 at 21:39
  • 1
    I've noticed it too and it's not new. It's been going on for at least a year or more. Although I appreciate this post, I would bet the person(s) doing the upvoting don't read meta.
    – Carey Gregory Mod
    Commented Sep 23, 2017 at 1:36
  • Is it possible that a bot is responsible for this? Recently I answered a Q and literally the same moment it got upvoted. I felt almost stalked. Reading might be faster than writing it up, but no way that upvoter checked the sources also.
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Sep 24, 2017 at 19:33
  • @LangLangC That was me (like 30 minutes ago). I happened to check back on the site just in the moment your answer came up. And yes, I haven’t read through all the references (although I do read very fast, like 15 pages / Minute).
    – Narusan
    Commented Sep 24, 2017 at 19:37
  • @LangLangC Nevertheless, the possibility of the upvoting being committed by a mod remains, Maybe mods could verify whether this has been done by a single user or is just an incident. It is getting very annoying
    – Narusan
    Commented Sep 24, 2017 at 19:37
  • Unclear. This phenomenon is not here on meta, is it?
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Sep 24, 2017 at 19:42
  • @LangLangC No. Activity on Meta is generally low
    – Narusan
    Commented Sep 24, 2017 at 19:44
  • @narusan-in-coma Part of the problem I think is that MANY people see an upvote on SE the same way they see a "thumbs up" or "like" on social media sites. It's not a way to emotionally support the writer, or even be like "I think so too"- it's to highlight a good AND well written question or answer. I wish we could emphasize that more...?
    – DoctorWhom
    Commented Oct 3, 2017 at 5:13
  • I'd prefer to see a VAS scoring of an answer or question! Ok, it won't happen.
    – Graham Chiu
    Commented Jan 24, 2018 at 23:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

To add to this, I've noticed that quite frequently I find questions with multiple close votes but no downvotes. If a question needs to be closed, it almost always needs to be downvoted as well. Downvotes push questions down, out of view, which is where you want bad questions.

The only times I vote to close without downvoting is when I encounter well-meaning, legitimate questions that are simply misplaced. In those cases I try to explain to the OP why I'm voting to close and offer an alternative if there is one. If they come back at me and argue, then I downvote.

2
  • As an example, the score of this question is way too high. It’s badly written, a duplicate and borderline on-topic.
    – Narusan
    Commented Sep 24, 2017 at 19:56
  • @CareyGregory I wholeheartedly agree. And I found myself doing that a few times myself just as a kneejerk, I didn't even realize I was doing it. We need to shake the social media out of our system here. "Downvote doesn't mean we don't like you, it means your question needs work." I think the SE site designers could have made it a little more clear in the actual button design that it isn't a blue thumbs up. How many people read the hover-over text for them?
    – DoctorWhom
    Commented Oct 3, 2017 at 5:15

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .