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enter image description here

Out of curiosity, I was checking Users > Voters section. To my surprise, I noticed that even with large amount of my absence from this site, I was holding 8th rank among the voters! I would rather say, that the amount of voting happening here is relatively poor. Hence, even though "voting" has been discussed & promoted in some of the old meta posts here, I felt compelled to start this thread.

I often see, some people appreciating a question or answer with "good", "nice", "thanks" kind of adjectives, but the voting part is missing. We should think of "voting" as a fuel for the growth of any good SE sites.

Some of the high reputation users actually like to observe increase in their reputation (those green +10's you know!), but when it comes to voting others, they become too choosy.

How can we ensure everyone votes more proactively?

For the sake of completeness, all are requested at least to up/down vote this post, should you feel that this topic has to be discussed. FYI, no reputation change happens in meta.

[Note: One crude & long term way is to "vote" only to those, who actively "vote". If someone suggests that way, then please come up with +ve/-ve effects of it.]

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    I think we can send messages to those users who are at least active members for six months & have gained lot's of reputation by question answers , but they themselves are not participating in voting fairly or whose number of votes casted is below some number (say 300-400). Also we can send message to OP for accepting an answer (if number of answers are there & after some time limit & have at least 2 upvotes) .etc By the way thanks for IMP question.
    – SwiftPushkar
    Commented Nov 15, 2016 at 11:21
  • @SwiftPushkar, your idea about "votes casted is below some number" seems good. To implement it, may be everyone can check the votes casted in a month or a quarter and see the list of users. Presently only few users are appearing. This implies that other users are Not interested in the so called "reputation game". So let's not vote their posts. Rather just inform them with "thanks" & "nice" for their efforts. After a while they will surely realize, something is wrong! :-) The way I have written above may appear austere in nature. But it can be expanded in an answer using sweet words.
    – iammilind
    Commented Nov 15, 2016 at 11:34
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    I think instead of some enforced rules for voting ,We can somehow encourage the New/Old users for voting by some other methods like properly explaning the imoprtance of it , or inviting them to participate in various chat rooms so everyone will be familiar with the views /beliefs of other's , that will also help in increasing number of casted votes as there will be no misunderstanding among members about the point of one's answer.
    – SwiftPushkar
    Commented Nov 15, 2016 at 11:43
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    @TheDestroyer, you should be congratulated for being the top voter in all fronts (week, month, quarter, year, all). Hence this post is the place, where the community owes you a big say. Of course everyone's opinion is important. Even if some people do selective voting, then also they should appear in the voters list, But I see bunch of high rep users, who don't care to vote enough, even though they are active enough.
    – iammilind
    Commented Nov 15, 2016 at 11:45
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    Yes totally agree with you. Voting is the fuel of any SE site.
    – Triyugi Narayan Mani
    Commented Nov 15, 2016 at 12:00
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    @SwiftPushkar is right, we shouldn't base our vote on someone's posts based on how active a voter they are. That's a violation of the site's rules; votes are supposed to be based on the quality of the post, not based on the person posting it. But it's fine to talk to people who aren't voting, and encourage them to vote more. But we shouldn't reward or punish users with our votes.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Commented Nov 15, 2016 at 13:43
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    I totally agree with you that Voting is fuel of SE sites... and I also agree with you that if an active user isn't using his votes... we shouldn't also vote his posts... (as per law of KarmaπŸ˜€)... but if his post is of good quality we should at least reward his post writing... "nice answer", "very useful information", "extremely nice.." etc... but without voting...πŸ˜€πŸ˜€πŸ˜€ Haha...
    – Tezz
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 6:33
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    @Tezz, try to post it as an answer. I too believe that this "Public Education Sessions" about voting is not going to work. If it had to work, then people (especially active users) would have been already voting. They aren't oblivion to reputation changes. Just that they are unable to appreciate others' efforts. At times strict actions have to be taken for better results. From Krishna's life, he had taken stern actions when needed. When he wanted to teach lesson to Gopi-s, he stole their cloths. Can we imagine, Krishna conducting "Women safety sessions"! Even think of current "Demonetisation"!
    – iammilind
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 6:40
  • I have just chkd the voters list..all the top 8 high rep holders(month/quarter/year/all) are found in that voters list....with may be 1 or 2 exceptions.. so almost all r actively participating...
    – Rickross
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 7:16
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    Also, this post seems to suggest that if someone has high rep points he shud be forced to vote for others' posts irrespective of whether he finds those post as useful ,correct **or **of good quality..this is sounding kind of an absurd of a proposal to me..in my case..i always try not to miss upvoting good & correct posts,even if those posts are missing citations i upvote all posts with good and dharmic intent..And i don't downvote at all ..and i chkd that i'm featuring in that voter list as well..so i'm doing good i guess..but i admit i cant do as good as say the destroyer..haha
    – Rickross
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 7:35
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    @iammilind I don't agree to ur views although i agree to the fact that all users shud actively participate in voting to make the site more lively...but voting for the sake of voting is just absurd...in any case, the intent voting,as far as i'm concerned,is acknowledging good, correct,helpful posts that enhance my and others knowledge,& not to return the favor,..and a high end user (or any user for that matter)wud not know who voted for his posts so shall he go about finding random posts and keep upvoting them??..
    – Rickross
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 8:23
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    I do think we meed to inspire people for voting but with positivity not negativity, so not upvoting good post just because user is not a high upvoter is wrong. Different people have different standard and different voting criteria. We can just starting voting more and more ownself, be helpful to each other and encourage others by inspiring them positively.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 13:04
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    On the sidenote, people have personal life too, few get busy and can't give much time. Now not voting there great answer will not going to show us in good light. Anwyay +1 for the meta post
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 13:05
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    @AnkitSharma -"be helpful to each other and encourage others by inspiring them positively. " Yes , that's the good point.
    – SwiftPushkar
    Commented Nov 16, 2016 at 13:23
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    Share (point out) Why is voting important?.
    – Pandya Mod
    Commented Nov 22, 2016 at 9:37

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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How can we ensure everyone votes more proactively?

By taking writing questions & answers seriously.

By writing answers with less grammatical mistakes.

By checking your answers often for grammar, punctuation etc.

I could easily upvote lot more answers that are a joy to read.

Answers with every other word italicized, missing commas and full stops are a pain to read.

Answers with a whole lot of cut & paste, not even highlighting what you want users to read from your huge blockquotes are also a problem.

Some users don't even check if their blockquotes contain typos, unreadable text etc. which means they themselves haven't fully read their answers but they expect others to read and upvote!

As cheenbabes writes in his excellent answer:

In other words, this site should NOT cite Wikipedia, contain personal opinions, be regurgitated, or have poor spelling, grammar, or phrasing.

The point should be to deliver very high quality information and each post should showcase writing skill, if not talent.

EDIT:

In case others want to do this, I just left the following reminder for an active user who hasn't been voting much:

You can see top voters at this link. Since we have about 4000 Q's and 5000 A's ... 100 votes is not a lot :) So encourage you to vote more, both Q's and A's. As you can see, top voter has voted 3500+ times!

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  • Good suggestion. One small thing: for correcting small typos, whether one should edit the answer or not is little debatable. Because every small edit will push that answer into active list. See this: Is it fair to promote own posts by either linking them into own Q&A or making insignificant edits?. Personally sometimes I am aware of some typos, but I refrain due to this.
    – iammilind
    Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 8:02
  • @iammilind Yes, I remember that Qn. For Hinduism.SE I don't think it's such a big problem that people will mind. I try to fix my questions/answers several times in the first 5 mins. after writing.
    – Say No To Censorship
    Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 8:08
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Share the article Vote Early, Vote Often.

The following pages may also explain the importance of voting to users:

Following post provides some guidelines to users:

Following badge is waiting!:

Civic Duty

If you're talking about "voting as fuel", following can be the Uranium!:

enter image description here

Following meta posts may help you:

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In the comment section to the Q, many of the fellow members feel that "Not voting to lazy voters" is not a right approach. Hence, let's keep this approach away from a general guideline & limited to personal opinion.
Even if we implement such policy hypothetically, that wouldn't solve the core issue of voting. Here are few suggestion, which I practice & are worth discussing.

1. Increase the voter base

If active/passive voters don't want to vote then, increase the people who can vote. On a funny note, this is similar to politicians encouraging for giving easy citizenships, like how it happens: in US for Mexico, in EU for middle east, in India for Bangladesh. :-)

To be able to upvote (good for quantity), 15 rep is required. To be able to downvote (good for quality), 125 rep is required. If some new users get couple of their Q&A upvoted then it will increase their confidence, activity & upvoting power.

In main SO when I joined, I was also a rookie answerer similar to how some new users come and express their thoughts here. However, because of other community members' encouragement, my reputation increased. This led me to learn SO's culture.
We all were new to Hinduism.SE at some point of time and made mistakes & still survived. Let's pass this favour to upcoming users.

This doesn't mean that, we upvote any non-sense & low quality post. Rather, if we feel that user is genuinely trying to answer but doesn't have right tools, then may be we can upvote their post & put a comment if needed. We may also follow this suggestion:
Please stop flagging (instantly) questions/answers as low quality if they are one-liners

Example: for new users I have changed my standards of quality. Hence, I upvoted almost entire posts of this, this, this, this, this, this, this, .. and many many more.

The immediate incentive was that, sometimes I had a good laugh while voting. :D

2. Upvote questions

Let's not downvote the questions easily. While downvoting a Qn, no reputation of -1 happens to the downvoter. But it does affects the asker. Qn is relatively easy & straight forward to improve compared to answer. If you feel like downvoting, then try improving it first.

3 Upvote bounties

Bounties are expensive for those who offer it. Let's at least refill their reputation loss by upvoting their question. There is no loss to anyone. But community gains.

4 Promote site to bring new voters

This completes the circle. Share existing Q&A, which are sensational, shocking, surprising in nature, to your circle using WhatsApp & other such mediums. Nothing wrong in being attention seeker, if it grows community. For example, when some of my circle were informed that according to MahAbhArata, Krishna says "it's ok to lie to a woman while enjoying" or Krishna said that "Had Karna not killed Ghatotkacha, I would have killed him", some of the people were shocked & surprised.

Here is a very limited list of such Q&A:

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  • This question can also be added to the list.
    – Sarvabhouma
    Commented Nov 24, 2016 at 11:31
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    Few of the upvoted example doesn't look deserving, upvoting weak stuff can also hamper site quality. Upvoting bounty is also wrong, people can offer bounty on bad, off topic stuff too, so upvoting all of them is also wrong. Rest it's a nice answer
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Nov 29, 2016 at 9:46

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