What are the basic principles for using the vote functions?

Question

Have noticed in chat and meta all users are being encouraged to vote more.

Does this mean peoples attitude to voting might need adjusted?

Am trying to list some related questions and observations regarding the use of voting.

Does any answer to a question that fully answers the question deserve an upvote even if it is an unexperienced users answer being viewed by an experienced user?

One question that has been marked as duplicate in main Question marked as duplicate has answer which asker confirms as accepted by confirming in comments (they have not found the accepted answer button and do not have enough rep to vote up).
The same answer was used to edit the other question that is linked. canonical question which actually did not provide an answer when originally marked as duped so i edited an answer there as mentioned. There are at least six names associated with this process yet the answer to Question marked as duplicate has not been voted on up or down.

Should reviewers vote on questions and answers they as they review questions?

Is there any reason to be concerned about this?

Another point i would like to make is some people appear to be rep hoing (prtostituting themselves with purely the intention of gaining rep) by giving very menial answers to questions that actualy have answers already elsewhere on site nor are they editing existing answers to other similar questions to enable the marking of dupe.

Is there something far wrong with current voting system and being abused by some?

Answer 1

Does any answer to a question that fully answers the question deserve an upvote even if it is an unexperienced users answer being viewed by an experienced user?

It doesn't matter how experienced or inexperienced a user is when they answer a question. A proper answer will have references and crosslinks to documentation. Vote on the content of the post, not the person who posts it. Besides, unless you know the person there's really no way to tell whether they're experienced or not.

There are at least six names associated with this process yet the answer to Question marked as duplicate has not been voted on up or down.

Flag questions that you feel should be instead merged with the original if you feel the duped question has answers that are useful.

Should reviewers vote on questions and answers they as they review questions?

That's up to you, I do.

Is there any reason to be concerned about this?

You haven't really linked to any evidence of rampant voting abuse.

Another point i would like to make is some people appear to be rep hoing (prtostituting themselves with purely the intention of gaining rep) by giving very menial answers to questions that actualy have answers already elsewhere on site nor are they editing existing answers to other similar questions to enable the marking of dupe.

Links?

Answer 2

If a canonical question doesn't answer something and you know what does, please, please improve it.

That's the whole point of canonical questions, so that if somebody has a generic problem (could be many different things), they have a solid list of things to try sequentially.

And about voting - just because something is duplicate does not mean it is neccessarily a bad question question (nor a great one). It just means there's something else on the site that has already handled the problem.

Should reviewers vote on things? Only if the question deserves it.

And finally, regarding slutty answerers... If you think somebody is deliberately doing something wrong, flag an instance of it and tell us what the problem is. Truth is, I'm probably as bad as other people. My default mode is to answer first, ask questions and look for duplicates later.

But as I say, if you think this is a significant issue with a user, let the moderators know. We might not agree but that's the best way to handle things without starting a war.

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Your commenting style makes it hard to understand what you're asking at any one time so I'm going to try and infer the question you want answered and answer them in the body of this post. If you have more questions, feel free to ask them and I will repeat the process.

Are reviewers obliged to check the quality of the questions and answers when they close another question against it?

Yes. There's nothing in the system that checks to see if you've read something, but if you vote for closure, you should be sure you're doing the right thing.

But at the same time there is no expectation that we will always get it right. Most things in the system can be reversed when a problem is brought to our attention.

Should reviewers be voting on posts as they review them?

They can if they want to and they think the post deserves it. Not every post is great and not every post that isn't great is rubbish. There are three voting states:

• +1, Yeah it's great!
• -1, It's rubbish!
• ±0, Meh.

Reviewers are able and invited to vote for things but there's no expectation they divert from their standard voting habits.