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I notice that there are quite some questions that get no up/down vote, but do have some answers.
This surprises me, as I would assume that someone who takes the time to answer a question has an opinion on that question. He either thinks it's good (up vote) or bad (down vote, edit, flag, close).
In the latter case he should not take the time to answer the question, but instead devote that time to improve it, or ask for clarification.
Here's an example of such a question on Photo.SE and Apple.SE.

Do you think it is a good idea to force a vote before one can answer the question? Why (not)?

Update:
Meta and community wiki's should be excluded from the force-vote system as with meta voting servers a different purpose and community wiki's might have more answers from one person (which would create a need for multiple votes).

Update 2: I see that a relevant question is asked here. The different answers include automating an up vote when answering and automating a question upvote when upvoting an answer. The highest rated answer reflects the idea presented in this answer to my question, but from a slightly different perspective. It just states that the main goal of the site is to write/rank answers. A suggestion is made to make the question vote buttons visually more outstanding to motivate people to vote on the question.

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  • 10
    ...or he thinks "meh" (no vote).
    – Bart
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 15:32
  • 4
    I think everyone is making sure to vote before they submit an answer. :-)
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 15:33
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    I'm not registered to vote; doesn't mean I don't have an opinion about politics.
    – Kermit
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 15:34
  • And to add to the confusion, the downvotes here don't even necessarily mean "bad question". meta.stackoverflow.com/help/whats-meta ;)
    – Bart
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 15:42
  • If he thinks "meh", why take the time to answer? And as shown in the examples, not everyone is voting on a question they submit an answer to @AaronBertrand. I (should) have added that this mechanism should be disabled on meta, as voting here serves a different purpose.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:01
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    @BartArondson Not everyone exclusively answers questions that they find completely fabulous. Hopefully they're not answering questions of very poor quality, but answering a question of mediocre quality isn't inappropriate.
    – Servy
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:06
  • But why not improve the mediocre question and then answer it? This improves the overall quality of SE.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:12
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    @BartArondson and then +1 the OP because you made their question better? Would you up-vote an incorrect answer that you edited (or commented) to make correct?
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:12
  • By improve I also mean asking for clarification, details, etc., without editing the question yourself. But even then, improving it yourself and giving an upvote is not bad either. You vote for the question, not for the OP right? If he gets rep because he sparked a great question, why not?
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:16
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    If you happen know the answer you might as well post it. That doesn't mean you think the question is particularly good or bad.
    – sth
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:19
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    @BartArondson Ususally the difference between a mediocre question and a fabulous question is how interesting it is, not so much how well it's written. You can't fix that in editing. Generally you're editing to turn a poor question into a mediocre question. You can't edit a question to just make it more interesting to the reader.
    – Servy
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:22
  • Automating a question upvote when upvoting an answer is also a terrible idea. Someone can give a fantastic answer to a terrible question, just like someone can give a terrible answer to a fantastic question.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:51
  • I'm not saying it's a great idea, just stating that it has been proposed (and received +votes). It was more to illustrate that I'm not the only one thinking about this issue.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:55
  • @BartArondson well of course, bad ideas are rarely considered bad ideas by everyone else; there are always going to be different opinions and perspectives about things. Democracy is a good thing, and in cases like this, it doesn't matter if one or more than one person thinks something is a good idea, when a large majority of the community thinks it isn't.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 17:15
  • Ironically, I just got a reversal badge for this question. Now, if only questions that should be upvoted deserve to be answered, how would this badge ever be issued?
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 22:29

1 Answer 1

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No, I think it is a terrible idea.

  1. Voting is not a mandatory activity on the site at all, never mind a mandatory part of participating in any single question.

  2. I may not have a strong enough opinion either way about the question - it's interesting, I may know the answer, but the question isn't noticeably good or bad and I may want to reserve my votes for other questions.

  3. I may be out of votes for the day - does that mean I don't have the right to answer until I can vote tomorrow? Who on earth does that help? (In addition, you are effectively limiting the number of answers a person can post - and even more so if they use up any votes on answers - potentially drastically affecting the entire set of behaviors for some of our most valuable users.)

  4. It is not every single person's job on this site to try to improve a bad question - and it certainly shouldn't be a requirement for someone to do so before they answer. I think you would see the quantity of answers decline significantly.

In this case, I did vote before I answered. Hope it was helpful.

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  • To be honest I forgot there was a maximum amount of votes per day, so (2) and (3) are understandable. For (1): It's indeed not mandatory at all, but SE is build around votes. So encouraging people to vote is good. And (4) Yes, quantity might decline. But people would take more time to think about the question (is it good? Bad? Do I need more info?) before answering, leading to higher quality answers. As you note, a vote is valuable, so it is only spent on well posed, detailed questions. These questions are better answerable and improve the quality of the knowledge found on SE.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:11
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    SE is built around votes, that doesn't mean I have to vote on every post I see.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:13
  • Correct, not every post you see, I didn't say that. But if you decide you want to answer it (and I guess not every post you see gives you that feeling) it might be a good time to consider what sort of question it is and vote accordingly.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:17
  • @Bart you're forgetting that votes on answers are part of the vote cap. See my addendum to bullet 3.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:18
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    @BartArondson You're right; votes are important on SE sites. We want people to feel strongly when they vote; to have spent time considering their decision, to not vote too lightly, and not to vote in a way that's contrary to what they feel is proper. Forcing someone to vote when they otherwise wouldn't is harming that voting system, diluting the votes of people who carefully made a decision with someone who didn't want to vote at all. That makes votes less useful, not more useful.
    – Servy
    Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 16:24

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