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My friend started using Stack Overflow, but I saw that in his questions he did not up-vote any answers; apparently he didn't realize he was supposed to.

Proposition:

  • Make it more obvious to new users that they should up-vote good answers (a bigger message about it, maybe? Whatever you have now, it's not working)

  • Make a bot that automatically posts a comment on every "new" question, e.g. "If you find the answer useful, please vote up the answer"

P.S. I will not explain to him what he should do, so we can experiment on him ;)

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  • 12
    I appreciate your help in getting me Copy Editor, but could you just phrase your posts nicely and save us both the effort? I end up deleting half your posts on a regular basis
    – Michael Mrozek
    Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 6:46
  • Please explain to me why you don't like the bold text? I tried to use keywords to make it more obvious what I'm talking about.
    – IAdapter
    Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 6:49
  • Are you talking about accepting an answer?
    – Eldros
    Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 12:14
  • no, i'm talking about up-voting. he did not accept any answer.
    – IAdapter
    Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 13:11
  • 2
    the same goes for accepting answers actually... some new people may just be lazy/not bother, but some might just not know they can accept an answer
    – David Michel
    Commented Jan 18, 2011 at 14:36
  • @IAdaptor - If you carefully examine the revision log then you'll note that he didn't just change the bold.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 15:21
  • @Pollyanna I do know that, but at first it looked like he did.
    – IAdapter
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 15:36

2 Answers 2

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Well this is a good suggestion. Let me suggest how it can be implemented -

  1. When a new user asks a question, when he clicks on submit - it should prompt a link to FAQ about how to accept an answer.
  2. When a new user has reached certain minimum reputation and is eligible for upvote, then during his next login, there should be a top bar pop up which would link to FAQ about upvoting. (just like it pops up when users get a new badge)

Hope this should do good to educate the users on upvoting and accepting answers.

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3

I don't know if this is possible, but how about tracking how many questions a new-user has read that have 3 (arbitrary) or more answers. If the new-user reads 8 (arbitrary) or more questions containing 3 (arbitrary) or more answers then a one of those top banners pops up saying something like "Do you know you can up-vote good answers? Click here to learn more..."

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