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Reference: this answer. Specifically, it ends with:

Please upvote , if it is making sense to your requirement. else elaborate more so i can make the answer to your question. :)

Firstly, the question was not clear, and I did post a comment asking for clarification and voted to close as unclear. The linked answer above was an attempt to answer (which is fine, if you think you have a handle on the question), but I have a couple of problems with the final sentence:

  • "Please Upvote" is unnecessary in an answer. I'm fine with nudging someone who forgets to accept an answer, but asking in the answer is effectively noise
  • By asking for clarification so the answering user can try again, the user has basically admitted they don't know if they've understood the question.

Should we discourage "Please upvote" and similar? If so, how? I considered editing the answer, but I generally only edit another's work to fix formatting or correct spelling/grammatical errors that make it hard to understand a post.

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  • 5
    Editing these out is a perfectly acceptable use of the edit button IMO, such remarks are of no real benefit to the site and I do often edit answers to remove them.
    – Matt Lacey Mod
    Apr 23, 2015 at 5:52

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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In this thread a couple years ago on meta.stackexchange, the accepted answer stated:

Not in the answer. The answer is reserved for... answering the question. Any other content in an answer is just noise, and is subject to removal.

If you must, put your humorous request for unicorn dollars in a comment below the answer. I suspect, however, that such requests may actually have the opposite effect of that intended.

I agree with that approach and would encourage the removal of "please upvote" as a totally acceptable edit here. I would endorse that approach for other types of "noise" such as "Hi blah...", signatures, jokes, etc.

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    Echos my sentiments exactly. Aside for the odd reminder to a newbie that they should mark an answer accepted if they've stated that it's helped them and not done so, nobody should ask for votes/acceptance. It's a core mechanic of the site that this happens.
    – Matt Lacey Mod
    Apr 23, 2015 at 5:51
  • 2
    Yeah, I had to make a comment like that a few days ago (which I'll probably use in a template). What's bad is when this OP has accepted maybe 6 out of the 171 questions they posted. At a certain point, it seems rather rude.
    – Programmable Medley
    Apr 23, 2015 at 19:10
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If you see it in an answer, edit it out. I suppose it's less distasteful in the comments and probably doesn't deserve a flag.

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Back in the day of vBulletin forum software, before the rep points system was introduced, users often answered posts with "Please mark as Resolved".

Perhaps the user intended to say "Please acccept my answer, if this resolves the issue".

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    I had to do something like this because more often than it should, people will be happy with the answer but not accept it. So I'd give them a comment like: "If <you or another user>'s answer has solved your question, please make sure to mark his answer as accepted. It is a good practice to encourage users to answer, verify to visitors of your question that it's valid, and a kind way to tell the person who took the time to answer your question, "Thanks".
    – Programmable Medley
    Apr 23, 2015 at 19:06
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    I recently had someone post a comment under my answer saying "Thanks a lot crmrprogdev!", yet they never accepted my answer! I responded with something similar to what you've said in your comment above but never got the checkmark. LOL! I agree that accepting answers should tastefully be encouraged.
    – crmprogdev
    Apr 28, 2015 at 19:04
  • Maybe a badge chain extending from "Scholar" would be a better way to encourage this? Say, accepted 10/100 answers?
    – Avrom Roy-Faderman
    Jun 15, 2015 at 15:59

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