When should we upvote a question on Arqade?

Question

The question I ask was first a question I had for any SE community. Naturally I make a research on this subject and find some very interesting Q&A :

• Meta SE; Why arent people voting for questions ?
• Meta SE; Why should I upvote a question ?
• Meta Arqade; Do you “sympathy upvote”?

But what about Arqade ? While upvoting / downvoting an answer and the reasons for downvoting a question seems pretty clear, I have doubts about upvoting a question. For example :

• Should I upvote a question incredibly well written when I do not own the game ? In this case, I take the risk of upvoting a question (as good as it can be) that can states something wrong without having the possibility of knowing it.

Is there a list of the good reason(s) for upvoting a question specifically for Arqade ?

If you think this is a duplicate, please do not hesitate to tell and to provide the Q&A I am looking for !

Answer 1

The first thing you need is a grasp of what is on and off topic. This is subjective, unfortunately, as different people have different views of what should be allowed. For purposes of upvoting, let's just say to avoid upvoting things that are blatantly off topic.

After you've determined that the question isn't blatantly off topic, the next criteria is, "Did I even consider upvoting this?" If so, then probably upvote it. That's it. If you thought it was interesting, or you want to know the answer, or even if the question elicited interesting answers, or whatever the reason, if it's not off topic and you enjoyed the question for any reason, give it an upvote.

Answer 2

I'm much in line with @StrixVaria, but I'd thought I'd also add my thoughts.

The vast majority of my question upvotes fall into two categories: "That's interesting" and "I was wondering the same thing myself" (the latter, of course, being a proxy for "I was just about to ask that"). It's not hard for there to be overlap between these two categories.

What's "interesting" can be rather broad, but you can use the hacker's guide to asking a question as a starting point. I like problems that are hard, but not impossible, to solve, and present a problem that isn't just a case of RTFM. The second category should be pretty self explanatory.

In addition to me finding a question interesting or being something that I'm curious about, it also needs to be on topic and well written (or easily edited to be well written). If there are enough spelling and grammar errors that I give up on editing, then the question usually receives a downvote. If I cannot understand what is being asked in the first place, the question receives a downvote. If the question is just (subjectively) bad, it receives a downvote.

There is a huge middle ground here where a question is on topic and well written, but I just don't find it interesting, or it's not something I wanted to know. I simply don't vote on those questions. This includes simple Minecraft command block problems, or other basic questions where an answer isn't easily found in a wiki, and most questions for games I don't play.

Now these are just my personal guidelines, and they may not work for everyone. What is interesting to one person probably isn't interesting to everyone else.

Answer 3

From the help centre:

Voting up a question or answer signals to the rest of the community that a post is interesting, well-researched, and useful, while voting down a post signals the opposite: that the post contains wrong information, is poorly researched, or fails to communicate information. The more that people vote on a post, the more certain future visitors can be of the quality of information contained within that post – not to mention that upvotes are a great way to thank the author of a good post for the time and effort put into writing it!

I try to vote by the following method:

• Questions get an upvote if they are useful
• Questions get a downvote if they are not useful, or are very easy to answer with a quick search on Google
• Answers get an upvote if they are correct/useful/well-researched (any or all of these traits)
• Answers get a downvote if they are wrong or not an answer to the question

Also, I don't vote on everything... only questions/answers that stand out as "good" or "bad". Of course, I am more likely to read questions that cover games/topics I am interested in.

There isn't anything wrong with voting on questions/answers that cover games you don't own... up or down. A good number of answers are even made by members without ever playing the game (e.g. searching other sites for the information on behalf of the asker).

However, the way you vote is up to you. You are not required to justify your votes.