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I just answered two questions back to back, both by new users. They both accepted my answer, but neither upvoted it. I see this happen fairly frequently to users (not just me), so my question is: can users upvote answers given to their question? If they can't, shouldn't they be able to? If they can, is a notice shown to them when accepting an answer along the lines of "also upvote this if you found it helpful"?

The feature request: Shouldn't a reputation points-less newbie at least be able to upvote a good answer to his/her own questions?

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I'd say it would be a good idea if they could up-vote on the answers to their own questions. That would allow them to give back to the community after receiving a helpful answer. And as for it being an exception; well, commenting already has a similar exception, so why not voting?

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  • On my first question, my eventual complete answer was partly based on one helpful partial answer, and I can't give credit by upvoting because I lack the rep. I don't want to accept an incomplete answer, but I don't like leaving a helpful answer unacknowledged.
    – ShadSterling
    Jan 21, 2013 at 2:21
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I don't view this as a problem since an accept is worth +15 and an upvote is +10.

Also, if you want the user to have enough rep to upvote then upvote their question and give them the rep. It only takes 15 to meet the upvote threshold.

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    A single upvote from the will give them +5 (iirc), so this is far from possible to let new users upvote or even accept.
    – Heiko Rupp
    Feb 10, 2011 at 7:05
  • @heiko at the time this was written, question votes were worth +10, see blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/…
    – Jeff Atwood
    Feb 11, 2011 at 4:20
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    But isn't only allowing them to accept an answer and not upvote only giving them the ability to deem one answer as useful?
    – Dason
    Jul 20, 2012 at 15:16
  • @Dason I agree with your reasoning but I think perhaps it's to avoid new users coming on and getting trigger happy with rep/upvoting before they've even proved themselves a bit. It seems a good balance to only allow accepting answers until 15 is reached.
    – user344410
    Jan 7, 2017 at 17:54
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    @SuperDuperApps Now this is a question I haven't seen in a very long time...
    – Dason
    Jan 8, 2017 at 13:43
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    It is really rather frustrating when you answer a question, along with several others, and you are the only one to up-vote it, so the poster has no way to reward answers they are finding useful. I also find it frustrating that so many questions are apparently clear enough to answer, but not clear enough to vote up.
    – Mark Booth
    Sep 14, 2018 at 13:52
  • I believe the question is more about the perspective of someone answering questions of new users. I think after you got many thousand points, this isn't an issue. But when you are building your reputation up, one might feel discouraged to answer questions from new users, as you would only get rep from accepted answers (+15 points), instead of almost twice that (+25 points), in the case of users that can also upvote. I understand that new users could get trigger happy. Still, maybe there could be a workaround where new users could also upvote ONLY the accepted answer.
    – xicocaio
    Aug 13, 2020 at 16:32
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I don't believe new users (with Rep less than 15) are able to vote on any posts, even answers to their own questions. I've had the same thing you described (acceptance with no upvote) happen to me a few times, and I believe most of those were users with 1 Rep.

It would make sense for new users to be able to vote on answers to their own questions, since they can already comment on them.

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I think new users should definitely be able to upvote answers on their questions. When I was new, I asked two questions. They didn't get upvoted even though I feel like they were very good and well-presented questions, so I hadn't gained enough rep to upvote, but I really wanted to let the people know that I appreciated their answers.

Accepting a 0 upvote question just felt wrong. Please add the exception to allow new users to upvote on their questions.

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From the SO FAQ:

Amass enough reputation points and Stack Overflow will allow you to go beyond simply asking and answering questions: 15 Vote up

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    I know that's what the FAQ says, but I am pretty sure there are exceptions here and there on those rules. It also says you need 50 rep to leave comments, but this is not true for new users as they can leave comments on answers to their questions.
    – Paolo Bergantino
    Jul 11, 2009 at 3:37
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I think I'd leave the behavior the way it is rather than creating a special case where you can upvote answers to your own questions. I like the fact that you need to contribute something (a good question or a good answer) before you get voting rights. Allowing comments to answers on your questions makes sense as you may need to provide feedback to issues raised in the answer.

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