8

I am an avid user of the Stack Exchange iOS App and have come across a "moral dilemma":

I frequent the "hot questions" tab quite alot (about every spare minute I have) and come across interesting questions with equally as interesting answers, which I naturally want to upvote. Is it ok for me to create an account to upvote that question?

I suspect it might skew page statistics registering to upvote one (and potentially just a few more) questions without participating in any other way.

Improve this question
3
  • 5
    I joined a site yesterday just to upvote a comment...
    – Cai
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 9:39
  • Your "use" of "quotes" has me "irritated"
    – user1228
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 15:13
  • 1
    I joined meta just to upvote this question to make this really meta
    – Ap31
    Commented Sep 22, 2016 at 13:33

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8

Yes, it's fine. I've done this. A lot of people have done this.

The statistics measure what they measure. Don't worry about skewing them.

I would caution you about one thing: especially on smaller sites, the questions that make it to the HNQ list are not necessarily the best examples of that site's scope. So it would be considerate of you to check out the comments on the question first, to see if high-rep users on that site are complaining about it. If so, think twice about upvoting the question, because then you might be contributing to giving casual visitors a misleading impression of the kinds of questions the site wants to encourage. (Of course, by the time a question makes it on to HNQ that may be a lost cause anyway.)

Improve this answer
1
  • 5
    +1. I've seen the crappiest questions get to HNQ with tons of upvotes. In fact, poorly researched questions are a magnet for HNQ: they get answered correctly and quickly, and everyone who sees the title thinks "hey, I could answer that", goes to look, sees it's already been answered, upvotes the existing answer (or even posts a new one) - bingo, tons of votes and views fast, HNQ.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 10:23
6

Yes. That is totally okay. The HNQ list exists to pull traffic from one SE site to other SE sites you don't visit (regularly).

If you want to award good posts and have the privilege to upvote, feel free to use it, but use it wisely. Keep in mind that content you might like is not up to standards of the site you are visiting, so be aware of the effect you might have. So don't just upvote every post.

Improve this answer

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