The incentives are currently a major problem. Looking at my posting history, my most upvoted posts are all light and fluffy things.
Try to tackle a difficult and controversial problem and you’ll find it very hard to get upvotes, because these will mostly be balanced out by downvotes from people who strongly believe in the opposite.
How much are you motivated by votes in the first place, though? I care a bit that a comment got any reaction, and a bit that it’s positive, but I give a lot more weight to followups and responses than to votes. And I especially don’t care about vote magnitude. 2 or 3 is as good as 10 or 12 to my happiness-at-posting response.
I think I probably care less about votes than the average person, since I appreciate feedback. I suspect that many people who received as many critical comments and downvotes as I have would give up on posting on the forum (not that many of most posts are negative, but I’ve often got posts downvoted into the negative, then voted up by other people).
The incentives are currently a major problem. Looking at my posting history, my most upvoted posts are all light and fluffy things.
Try to tackle a difficult and controversial problem and you’ll find it very hard to get upvotes, because these will mostly be balanced out by downvotes from people who strongly believe in the opposite.
How much are you motivated by votes in the first place, though? I care a bit that a comment got any reaction, and a bit that it’s positive, but I give a lot more weight to followups and responses than to votes. And I especially don’t care about vote magnitude. 2 or 3 is as good as 10 or 12 to my happiness-at-posting response.
I think I probably care less about votes than the average person, since I appreciate feedback. I suspect that many people who received as many critical comments and downvotes as I have would give up on posting on the forum (not that many of most posts are negative, but I’ve often got posts downvoted into the negative, then voted up by other people).