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I've been quite active these past few weeks and I've observed something that is troubling to me about this community, which is the lack of votes. I see questions get commented on by 3 or 4 people, some of whom are high reputation veterans, clearly indicating that the question is interesting but the question has no votes.

I vote on any question that's legitimate, that was asked with proper context and having indicated that the poster knows what they are talking about, knows what they know and where they are stuck and is turning to this community for help. That's most questions on here. I do see quite a few new people who are asking the community to write code for them or poorly asking their question or not RTFM, and I don't vote for those.

My general feeling is that people in this community need to vote more freely on questions and answers alike. What do you think?

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  • 3
    you got my upvote :)
    – Scott Pelak
    Commented Oct 15, 2013 at 16:46

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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I have always used the voting system as a means of promoting good behavior. If a question is formatted properly, even if it isn't very difficult/interesting to myself, I give it an upvote. In fact, I tend to vote on questions more frequently than answers.

I always tend to vote heavily on other answers to questions I have also answered myself. I think part of the community will only vote on answers they feel are 100% correct. If a question has 5 answers, you can vote on all 5! Voting doesn't signify that "this is the correct answer exactly". It signifies "this adds great content to help resolve this question". Not everything is black and white.

Anyway, vote more and vote more freely. You don't lose points by giving other people votes. In fact, the more you vote, the more people will vote for you too (since that person you voted for will frequent the site more often, see everyone in the community voting heavily, and vote heavily themselves)!

There are a few badges that deserve more people in them. As a community, we can and need to make this happen:

  • Mortarboard - Earned at least 200 reputation in a single day - Awarded 13 times
  • Epic - Earned 200 daily reputation 50 times - Awarded 0 times
  • Legendary - Earned 200 daily reputation 150 times - Awarded 0 times
  • Guru - Accepted answer and score of 40 or more - Awarded 0 times

We can and must do better! Get out there and vote people!! When you do, you can get these badges!

  • Suffrage - Used 30 votes in a day - Awarded 35 times
  • Vox Populi - Used the maximum 40 votes in a day - Awarded 29 times
  • Civic Duty - Voted 300 or more times - Awarded 28 times
  • Electorate - Voted on 600 questions and 25% or more of total votes are on questions - Awarded 8 times

The systems are in place to make voting lucrative. Get involved. Believe me, it helps a ton and you learn so much!

EDIT: This is an extremely important issue. I have given my thoughts here, but I also expanded upon them on my blog - http://jessealtman.com/2013/10/salesforce-stackexchange-speak-up-and-vote/. It is time, we as a community, stand together and vote more often. We need to set this precedent!

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    Great answer Jesse, read the post, loved it, retweeted and reflected, great food for thought and action!
    – Andrew Fawcett
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 11:23
  • the consecutive day badges are nothing but a route to burn out, fully support voting to your fullest no need to be stingy
    – Ralph Callaway
    Commented Nov 3, 2018 at 9:57
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Totally agree! I even see questions with multiple answers, but no votes on the question. If a question is worth answering, it's surely worth an upvote!

We should have more members of the Electorate!

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    I vote for questions that ask something interest or are well written with good information. There's definitely a lack of voting but I think on the whole a lot of people are new to the idioms of the network and still finding their feet.
    – Matt Lacey Mod
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 0:03
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    I vote for every question that looks like the user took their time to ask it with proper formatting and decent information. Even if I feel the question isn't that interesting, it promotes the user to keep asking questions.
    – Jesse Altman
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 12:33
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    I think the big problem is that people think voting has to be something interesting to them, subjectively interesting not objectively interesting. I think this is hard for new and veteran users to understand.
    – greenstork
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 15:47
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    I've got an average of almost 2 votes per day. I promise to get better!
    – sfdcfox Mod
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 20:46
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    Yes likewise for me, i always up vote a question i answer, but often forget when i add comments! Will improve!
    – Andrew Fawcett
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 11:22
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    Also good point on the formatting Jesse, i have personally started doing a bit more editing of questions to help people understand the editing syntax and promote their question better, while also proposing better question titles etc. Sometimes questions are really good just have a poor title!
    – Andrew Fawcett
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 11:33
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As a non-developer noob to this format, voting isn't something I'm familiar with. What's the acceptable behavior here? What's expected of me? From the comments above, there are different patterns of voting. Is that ok or is there a norm I should be following?

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    Hi Amber! Voting isn't a black or white type of issue. It is really up to the voter on how you want to vote. Many people here vote to promote better behavior (so downvoting improper questions etc) while also upvoting questions they find important/interesting. At the end of the day, the voting system is in place simply to give kudos for participating on the site. Each person gets 40 votes a day, so people will use them differently, and that is perfectly fine! With that said, the general consensus is the more you vote the better. It promotes community growth and keeps users coming back.
    – Jesse Altman
    Commented Oct 14, 2013 at 20:23
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    Good to know! I'll do my best to vote more! Thanks!
    – Amber Neill Boaz
    Commented Oct 17, 2013 at 15:20
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This is the reason why I stopped visiting the site regularly.
I stuck it out to get my 100 days gold badge, but after that just couldn't find any incentive to participate any more.

It is possible to see every users vote count (but not what they voted on) on their profile page:

enter image description here

I'm not going to call anyone out specifically, but I know some users who for the amount they participate have woeful vote counts.

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    Daniel, it is unfortunate that not everyone votes to the level they should. I have even been guilty of it myself in the past, sometimes there is only so much time. With that said, I hope after a short break you can get back to visiting the site regularly. Sometimes a short break is needed, but users such as yourself are the backbone of this community. Keep voting and others will start to follow soon enough. We just have to keep pushing forward.
    – Jesse Altman
    Commented Oct 4, 2013 at 13:17
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    Daniel, I got very busy and didn't have time to participate here on a regular basis. I think I also needed the break whether I realized it or not. Please know that I valued your contributions here. It sometimes takes effort to vote questions and answers up. I know its also annoying at times to see those who keep coming back with questions, but never accept the answers they're provided with nor vote them up. That can be discouraging. Perhaps that's because their questions never get voted up??
    – crmprogdev
    Commented Nov 4, 2013 at 15:29
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One thing I have noticed is that once a question is old - say >5 days, that's it. It (and it's answers) basically fall off the SE event horizon.

I have noticed this, because I have continued to get a lot of rep on the main StackOverflow site, years after I answered the original questions. This does not happen on this site.

I know some people don't like this feature, but I think if the answer has merit, even if it's old, why not upvote?

Hell, you have 40 votes a day, they are free, why aren't we using them? Are we afraid that by voting someone else up, we'll get left behind? Sounds like some sort of sad, reverse tragedy of the commons scenario.

Time to up our game, I say.

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    I do receive upvotes on old answers tbh.
    – Samuel De Rycke Mod
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 13:17
  • Yes, I do too - but significantly fewer that the main stackoverflow site. Perhaps my answers are just a bit crap :)
    – Caspar Harmer
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 17:51
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Well I only up vote the question or answer if

  • it is very well written, has good detail in few words, to the point and something which is new to me and on this site or exceptional scenario.

  • Question which seems simple but has a trick behind.

  • Also the questions which show some next level research. I rarely found these questions types, so my up vote count is very less.

  • I generally look for mobile side questions here and up vote them without above conditions if it is a real question.

Except I am trying to change this habit as it leads to few up votes. Do I need to improve?

Edit After comments:

It is not always necessary to up vote a question which worth answer, sometimes it happens that I answer a question because i know its solution and don't up vote it because a question with same scenario has been asked previously has little difference but can not be marked duplicate.

E.g; Previously I answered three questions "How to call a action function by jquery?" , "How to call an actionFunction using javascript?" and another one was "Action function not calling by Javascript?" in short period of time. I answered them, If we started judging them they worth answer or not then next two answer don't worth. Only comments will be enough to provide reference, but I know solution, so I answered but no up vote. There can be many more scenarios. Basically I primarily don't think of up vote or down vote I think to help sometimes.

A real question must be answered if we know the best approach to solve it

A good question or answer always have good chances of up vote. In addition, above mentioned 3 points are strictly followed on StackExchange's StackOverflow site. Fourth is interest dependent.

On Stackexchange, I research on top 9 active technology sites behaviour. Salesforce has good number of up votes per day comparatively (shows good behaviour) and almost no down votes. It is receiving good traffic and standing itself at good position among other site and youngest among all competitors (However Magento site may win). Salesforce is not the top but has 25th rank.

Instead of complaining up votes we should motivate Questioners to accept the answer if it solved their problem. SalesforceStack is significantly behind in this case. It has low answer acceptance rate even several questions have good and perfect answers. They remain up voted only.

One of the fact is that few don't up vote answers/questions if they don't like our question/answer according to their patterns of answering/questioning. E.g; This answers has a down vote because this voting pattern is wrong according to them or may be for more users.

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  • I will add: Any question that has an answer - must worth at least a vote
    – Saariko Mod
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 17:25
  • 6
    I disagree Saariko, poor questions may have poor answers too. If the question is "fix my trigger" and the answer simply does that without trying to educate the OP, neither is getting my upvote.
    – Samuel De Rycke
    Commented Oct 17, 2013 at 9:07
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    As a corollary, if I answer a question I always upvote it; if I didn't think it was worthy of promotion I wouldn't spend my time answering it.
    – Mike Chale
    Commented Oct 17, 2013 at 15:21
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    I definitely agree with @Saariko here. If you think a question is worth your time to actually write an answer, it has to be worth an upvote. For the answerer, there is absolutely no benefit not to upvote someone. It only brings more attention to the question and obviously it was valid enough for you to answer it, so why not tell the person that with an upvote?
    – Jesse Altman
    Commented Oct 17, 2013 at 17:51
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    I just want to point out that the voting system on this site is completely different than the normal site @reddev. As the meta site is purely discussion based, votes on this site typically mean agree or disagree. It doesn't add or remove reputation and the voting pattern here does not correlate to the voting done on the main site from my experience. From the FAQ - salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta - "On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself."
    – Jesse Altman
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 12:25
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    I agree with your comments regarding accepting answers. It can be frustrating at times to provide assistance and not know if it was helpful to the user. Some, won't appreciate it, yet others may also benefit from it. I recognize and accept that. It's my choice to whether to participate by responding to their post. I gain from the fact that others also choose to participate.
    – crmprogdev
    Commented Nov 4, 2013 at 15:24

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