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This question is essentially a variation of Bounty-like facility for rewarding excellent questions in the spirit of GentlePurpleRain's comment here.

I reproduce the linked question and comment below:

Question:

Amongst the reasons for starting a bounty, one can select:

Reward existing answer

One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty.

Why not enable one to reward excellent questions in a similar manner?

Comment:

This wouldn't have to be a bounty, per se, since there would be no reason to wait the 7 days to award it. It could basically just be an extra "uber-vote" that costs the voter reputation. So I can upvote a question, which gives the asker 5 rep and costs me nothing, or I can "uber-vote" a question, which allows me to transfer x amount of rep from me to the asker, to reward an exemplary question.

It is unquestionable that there are brilliant questions on this site, and it seems asymmetric to reward answers but not questions. From all the discussions I have seen on this topic, the consensus seems to support this idea. Further, the technicalities of a bounty seem to be eliminated by the concept of an uber-vote. Considering that the linked post is 10 years old and especially with the introduction of sites such as Puzzling SE, I find it to relevant to revisit the discussion. If this has already been asked recently, I would appreciate if someone can state why exactly this feature request was denied.

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    If you really want to give points to an OP, find one of their answers and give that a bounty. State why you want to do so in the message.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 19:23
  • @Luuklag That gives the impression that I am rewarding their answer, not their question. Why not have a built-in system feature itself?
    – user1205410
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 19:27
  • Good questions already get ample rewards in the form of good answers, which are far more valuable than rep points.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Aug 5, 2022 at 2:47
  • If you want to invest energy in questions, consider improving mediocre ones to make them more attractive to potential answerers and more useful to future readers. Simply improving the grammar & spelling can enhance a question's value.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Aug 5, 2022 at 2:50

1 Answer 1

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Optimize for the pearls, not the sand. Having questions come through is like sand on a beach. Having a brilliant answer is like finding a pearl in that sand.

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    "questions are merely the sand that produces the pearl". This may be true in the majority of the cases, but I don’t think we can create a blanket generalisation. You can find some question "pearls" here - I got ninety-nine problems - so here's another one!, Pearl Dive.
    – user1205410
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 19:26
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    Hard disagree @BeKind. There are a lot of places that people can ask questions. Even those questions. Ever hear of Yahoo Answers? Quora? Reddit? Run-of-the-mill forums? There's so much sand that we don't know what to do with it. In an ironic way, the irritant that produces the pearl in this case - in your view the question - is what creates the pearl in the first place.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 19:29
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    1) Both questions and answers are rewarded equally by reputation. 2) Bounties/Uber-votes can be chosen/reserved for the best questions, so the "sand" will not receive these. 3) The "run-of-the-mill" forums do not have the level of quality that SE has; asking there is not equivalent IMO. 4) Shouldn’t we encourage "pearl-like" questions? Since the "sand" is an irritant, wouldn’t this step only serve the purpose of eliminating it?
    – user1205410
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 19:32
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    Good pearls arn't made from sand any more, there's an artificial, and carefully depected nucleus it forms around. We're a pearl farm, not a beach...
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Aug 5, 2022 at 0:36

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