Questions with more favorites than upvotes?

Question

Seriously, WTF? (In case you can't read my cursorwriting, the line above that is "3 < 7".)

I'll admit that this example is a bit disingenuous. The question attracted a number of downvotes because it looked like Yet Another Bad Interview Question, but then it attracted some very interesting answers and started getting upvotes (and favorites). The actual ratio is +8/-5, which (in this case) explains why there are more favorites than upvotes.

But I've seen this before, and I doubt that every time it's caused by some intense downvoting. Some questions get more favorites than upvotes, and this is probably wrong.

I know some people use (or used) the favorites system as a way of getting back to questions where, say, they had asked the OP for clarification, but I believe that is now an unnecessary use of the favorite tool, with the addition of comment notification. There are so many ways now to get back to a question you asked a while ago that this use is no longer necessary.

In this case, I propose a modest change:

1. If simple bookmarking is the intended use of the "Favorite" function, then we should change the name to "Bookmark" so it appears nonjudgemental.
2. If the "Favorite" marking has no more use as a bookmarking tool, and solely conveys the "I like this question" or "I will find this useful in the future" meaning, why not add a popup saying "If you like this answer, perhaps you should consider upvoting it."

Note that these two changes are not mutually exclusive. People will frequently bookmark things they like, so the popup could be useful even if the name is changed.

Discuss?

Answer 1

I upvoted you, but only because of your lacking cursor hand-writing skills.

The Favourite is a bookmark (bookmarks are called favourites in IE, too, IIRC). Even if people disagree and downvote they still could be interested how the question evolves. Maybe they hate it that much, that they want to watch it going down. I doubt that a renaming is necessary.

A tooltip "Do you want to upvote" isn't useful here, I think. Understanding and clicking the favourite star seems more complicated than the upvote arrow (according to support entries here on Meta). So I doubt that people who "bookmark" and do not upvote do that unintentionally.

Answer 2

I've seen that behavior mainly on the "train-wreck questions", where , I suppose, people want to go back, not because of how good the question is, but rather to see how it turns out.

Also, I imagine some people might be a bit protective of their votes (not such a good example, as there is only one favorite there), so they might be favorite a question that they liked, but not cast a vote, for whatever reason.

Answer 3

Unfortunately I still find the need to use the favourite icon to bookmark a question you have commented on, as when asking for more information from users, you only get @replys if the user knows to use them, and I find that this is not often the case, especially on server fault where we get a lot of new users just asking 1 question.