Are we voting enough?

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Andrew Newell
Andrew Newell am 1 Apr. 2011
Kommentiert: Sergio Manzetti am 14 Jun. 2021
After about two months of MATLAB Answers, there are about 270 questions that have one or more votes. That's out of 4100 questions. For comparison, more than 1050 questions have no answers. The same is true of answers - most get no votes. The questions and answers that attract a lot of votes are mostly "meta" questions about MATLAB or MATLAB Answers, or "fun" questions (challenges). Are there really so few good technical questions and answers out there? Can we do anything to encourage more voting?
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Jan
Jan am 2 Apr. 2013
And another bump. Sorry for repeating myself, but I see so mane threads, where smarts contributors spend a lot of time and demonstrate interesting techniques - without voting for the good questions.
Please, vote much more to improve the quality of our platform.
Sergio Manzetti
Sergio Manzetti am 14 Jun. 2021
Goodness what a forum! Here we discuss politics on a mathematical software forum, and get 7 answers, while I post a question on typing up a Bessel equation in MATLAB and get ZERO answers. MATLAB forum has A LOT to learn from Mathematica forums.
This is plain and simple not good enough, MATLAB .
Sergio

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Akzeptierte Antwort

Sean de Wolski
Sean de Wolski am 1 Apr. 2011
I'll vote for a question based on its:
  • clarity
  • example data/results
  • politeness
  • presence of error messages/specific details
It doesn't matter how advanced or not advanced it is. As far as answers, I'll vote for an answer that provides a good reference or working example/explanation, e.g:
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Paulo Silva
Paulo Silva am 1 Apr. 2011
You tell them what's wrong instead of the "-1 Vote" comment! it's easy enough.
Jan
Jan am 1 Apr. 2011
@Paulo: Users are responsible for their own reactions to comments of others. And as far as I can see nobody was stopped from posting until today.
But without any doubt, a detailed explanation would be more helpful.

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Weitere Antworten (6)

Jan
Jan am 1 Apr. 2011
No, we do not vote enough, neither questions nor answers.
A reason for this might be, that there is still no common agreement about the meaning of a vote:
Should we vote the question "How can I use EVAL to ..."?
  • Yes: Anybody should have read the answers.
  • No: Nobody should have asked this silly question. Catching further attention to this bad programming practice should be avoided.
Should we vote the corresponding answer "Read the FAQ"?
  • Yes: It is profound.
  • No: It is trivial.
And the answer "don't do this"?
  • No: It is hilarious, if it is not voted.
  • Yes: It is valuable, if it has 12 votes as a strong hint to think twice.
I'll start a new thread about voting policies.
  1 Kommentar
Andrew Newell
Andrew Newell am 2 Apr. 2011
I don't know whether to answer this here or in the thread you started! Easier to answer it here, I guess.
"How can I use EVAL to ... ?" Even a dumb question might be worth voting for if the answers are insightful (and, of course, vote for the answers).
I wouldn't vote for "Read the FAQ", but if there is a link to some earlier post then the latter deserves a vote.
Yes, vote for "don't do this", if it needs saying.

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Andrew Newell
Andrew Newell am 2 Apr. 2011
I'm surprised that some people think that voting for questions is time consuming. It's just a button click! It is not necessary to read any questions or answers that you weren't going to read anyway, but if you think it's good - why not vote for it? Either most people aren't doing this or very few people are reading any given question.
As for valuing votes - I have often put a lot of effort into answering a question and then got no reaction of any kind. Then I wonder whether my effort has benefited anyone or my time would have been better spent elsewhere.
In some environments, such as iTunes, some people review a product and then others rate the review useful or not. This seems to work well, but there are far more votes than we see in MATLAB Answers. Perhaps the biggest problem with this voting system is that there are not many of us.
  2 Kommentare
Paulo Silva
Paulo Silva am 2 Apr. 2011
1- I'm surprised that some people think that voting for questions is time consuming. It's just a button click!
no it's not!
2- It is not necessary to read any questions or answers
yes it is!
3- very few people are reading any given question.
that's correct, sometimes even the person that puts the question disapears.
4- As for valuing votes - I have often put a lot of effort into answering a question and then got no reaction of any kind. Then I wonder whether my effort has benefited anyone or my time would have been better spent elsewhere.
I feel exactly the same but my effort is rewarded with experience/knowledge
5- Perhaps the biggest problem with this voting system is that there are not many of us.
few people can afford to waste time here, and fewer can spend a day voting just to "improve the quality" of the system.
Jan
Jan am 2 Apr. 2011
@Andrew: The effort put in an answer will be wasted even if the answer gets 1 vote and is accepted - in the some month it will be impossible to find it in the heap of questions. Only massive voting can lift valuable posts from the noise of useless stuff. Therefore I decided now to vote >20 times a day, because voting is a single mouse click only and I read the posts anyway. I'm sure that I can retrieve the invested time by avoiding such fruitless rhetorical discussions in the comment section. +1

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Matt Fig
Matt Fig am 1 Apr. 2011
I too have been thinking about this lately. Mostly because I noticed some really good answers, some might call them 'classics' for their particular questions, which had no votes and had been bounced up to the top of the list several times that day. I went ahead and voted on them because I do think it shows people how the community feels, especially on certain perennial topics.
I do think votes convey information, and so are important. How important, I am still trying to determine... I do hope more people chime in on this one...
Daniel Shub
Daniel Shub am 15 Nov. 2011
I have decided that I haven't been voting enough. Basically I haven't been voting at all. I have now decided that if I read a question and it is about MATLAB and provides enough detail to be answered, then I will vote for it (baring doit4me type questions). If an answer is similar to the one I would have provided, I will vote for the answer. If the answer is very different, but in my eyes not incorrect, I will vote for it.
I am anticipating voting a lot.
  2 Kommentare
Jan
Jan am 15 Nov. 2011
There are a lot of threads without an accepted answer, although there are sufficient answers. A lot of users do not care about voting and accepting. Therefore I'm voting for applicable and useful answers.
This forum has about 12 contributors who create answers frequently. It is easy to identify them even without votes and reputation points. The most voted questions are meta-questions about this forum itself. Therefore my question remains: Who cares about the votes?
Daniel Shub
Daniel Shub am 16 Nov. 2011
I think currently the votes are useless, since we are not using them. If we voted for questions more frequently, then I could use the votes as a guide for determining which questions I want to read and which I want to skip. If we voted for answers more, then it would provide guidance as to whether or not the community thinks that a question has a good answer. To often the accepted answer doesn't answer the question and isn't a good general answer.

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Paulo Silva
Paulo Silva am 1 Apr. 2011
Encourage voting?! really?! I fail to understand why people give such importance to votes, we are here mainly to learn with each others, share the knowledge and ask questions, the votes are merely a tool to classify what people think it's important for them, no big deal.
The thing we should encourage is more participation and reducing those 1050 unanswered questions, maybe turning those questions in simple contests.
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Paulo Silva
Paulo Silva am 1 Apr. 2011
Those who accept anything aren't that many, in those cases I delete my accepted answer when there's a better one, did it many times!
Sean de Wolski
Sean de Wolski am 1 Apr. 2011
Deleting an answer (unless there's a better one) can is bad (In my opinion). It may be useful to someone in the future. That's something very nice about the newsreader - I've found threads from the mesozoic era that are still quite useful.

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Shunchao Wu
Shunchao Wu am 15 Nov. 2011
Hey,
I find there's no email reply for "Comment",
and "Comment" can not be modified, not be voted,
nor make the Question latest one in the questions list.
  2 Kommentare
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson am 15 Nov. 2011
You are correct there is no notification for Comments, and that Comments cannot be modified or edited.
They do, though, move the Question to the top of the normal sorting order.
The (quite new) header "Latest Activity" will not reflect a Comment to an Answer, however.
Shunchao Wu
Shunchao Wu am 15 Nov. 2011
Yes, Thanks. A pity that I can not "vote" your words.

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