Reduce the reputation earned by answering a question you haven't upvoted

Question

Yes, I started with “reduce the reputation”, so I'm going to be downvoted into oblivion.

Ever since the early days, it was apparent that many questions got answers but no upvotes, and the general response was that answerers should upvote the questions they answer most of the time.

I can think of only a few reasons not to upvote a question I've answered:

1. I've run out of votes.
2. A new user lacking the 15 rep to upvote.
3. The question is a good one, but so badly asked it doesn't deserve upvoting as is.
4. The question is technically valid, but so trite it doesn't deserve upvoting.

Well, looks like the team is prepared to help with #1, by providing more votes for questions.
For #2, let's just say that new users (<15rep) get a dispensation.
For #3, now everyone has access to the edit button to improve the question.
For #4, well, if the question is so trite, the answer can't be that difficult.

So: if you answer a question and don't upvote it, I propose that you earn less reputation from answer votes. Perhaps only +5 rather than +10.

I'm aware that this discloses whether you've voted on a question if you've answered it. I don't think this is a problem. Remember that you can vote up or down.

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_{Before proposing this, I wanted to see how many people would be affected. The answer is, a lot. (Hoping these queries mean what I think they mean since this is my first foray in the data explorer.)}

• ^{Zero-score questions: On SO, 5.5% of questions have a score of 0 and no answer. 19.4% have a score of 0 and one answer. 11.6% have a score of 0 and two answers.}
• ^{Question score distribution: On SO, 46% of all questions have a score of 0. About 1% have a negative score (all these queries look at score, not upvotes, but this 1% figure shows that downvotes are second-order).}
• ^{Question upvote excedent: Only 13.2% of questions have more upvotes than they have answers. 15.7% have as many. 32.3% have one less. 37.9% have at least two more answers than upvotes. More breakdown.}
• ^{I thought people might be refraining from upvoting questions because they were afraid of running out of votes. So here's a question vote deficit breakdown by question time. So, yes, time has an effect, but it's small: if you ask between 0:00 and 1:00 UTC, and get at least one answer, you have a 31.8% chance of getting more upvotes than answers. Between 6:00 and 7:00, the chance drops to 26.8%. That's barely statistically significant.}

Answer 1

Horse Feathers. Why should I upvote the questions I answer? Sometimes I answer poor questions. Frequently I answer middle-of-the-road questions that are perfectly accurately described with a total vote score of 0. Other times I upvote well-done questions that I'm not qualified to answer.

I don't owe the question-asker a cookie, and they don't owe me one either.

Am I encouraging bad answerers? Well, I don't do this all the time, and I have some criteria that attempt to avoid reinforcing serial bad-question-depositors. Really, the 'middle-of-the-road' case is what I want to emphasize.

Answer 2

As a question asker, I don't particularly agree with this idea.

I don't think of voting as a binary option, and I'm certain that I'm not alone. When it comes to questions, upvoting means that I find the question useful, downvoting means that I find the question not useful, and abstaining means that I think it's a plain old question. It doesn't have to be a bad question in order to not get upvoted, and it doesn't have to be a good question in order to avoid downvotes. It may just be a question.

While I'm obviously invested in getting answers to my own questions, I wouldn't upvote a few of my own questions if I were just a passerby. This is a particular one I cite often, it's a very basic question. I know it's not worth all that much, after all it has 0 votes. But is it really so worthless, so "trite", that people should earn less reputation for answering it?

Answer votes are tooltip'd to suggest voting on what's useful. Which is generally what is helpful and correct. And if there's one thing the answers were, it was useful, helpful, and correct. The fact that I may have been somewhat silly in asking the question doesn't change the fact that those answers can still be found to be useful. And in the end, votes indicate that a bunch of people found it useful. If one believes that the answer is covering such simple information that it's not worth the full effort of +10 reputation, then that person probably believes the answer to not be useful, and should appropriately abstain from upvoting answers that are not useful.

If someone has the kindness to address basic, plain old questions that I may ask, I don't need a pity upvote just so that the user can get the full reputation they deserve based on however many users find their answers useful.

Answer 3

Gilles, I agree that it doesn't make sense to answer a question if you're not willing to upvote it, but I don't think giving half rep is the answer.

It would seem if we wanted people to upvote questions, we should be providing positive reinforcement for the behavior we want.

I suggest giving +5 or +10 for every day you hit your question vote max (as of today, that is 40 votes). I am rather sure we would see an increase in question voting if this policy was implemented.

Answer 4

Answering a question, and voting the questions are two separated actions. Some questions are worth to be answered, but they do not deserve a vote. For example, I imagine it is difficult that a question ending with "please help me; it's urgent," will be voted; yet, if the question is not too generic and it's clear what the OP is asking, the question is worth of an answer.

What is the effect of what proposed if not to punish who answered, after his answer has been up-voted? The more the answer is voted, the more the answerer is "punished;" they would lose 5 points for a vote, 50 points for 10 votes, 100 points for 20 votes.
What is worse is the answerers would be "punished" for a possible problem with the question, not the provided answer, for which they are not responsible.

If you think the question has some kind of problems, then simply down vote the question, not a possibly excellent question; after all, if X users (with X greater than 2) have voted the answer, it cannot be that bad.