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In my experience on this site, questions do not get enough votes, up or down. This is a problem for a beta site, as the votes and people with certain rep levels must be made for site graduation. Further, it gets posters to come back if it's up votes, and rethink their next question if it's down votes.

There needs to be more votes on questions on this site.

While we're here, answers could use a little boost too. Vote often, vote a lot.

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    This is pretty standard across all sites. And yes, voting is essential. The main meta.se post on it has a lot of ideas of how to do this, but in general just do it; be the example – Dr Mayhem♦ Jan 22 '17 at 16:01
  • Regarding the low votes on questions, there's many low-quality questions and not so many intriguing questions that will provide insights for people other than the asker themself. The low vote-rate in general is more of a site-wide factor. I believe some part of it comes from the many visitors that just open an account to ask a specific question, but don't partake in voting/accepting the answers. Some of my answers are not accepted and have zero upvotes even though the asker thanked me in the comments. Maybe the voting process should be made more clear during signup? – MoritzLost Jan 22 '17 at 16:44
  • Anyway it's not something we can solve. The important thing is for the users who do care about the site to vote often. However, since there are generally much less votes than on other SE sites, each individual vote counts for much more. I'm more reluctant with my votes on video.SE than I would be on graphicdesign.SE or worldbuilding.SE ... not sure how to tackle this. Someone has to make the first move I guess – MoritzLost Jan 22 '17 at 16:46
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    @Moritz I don't understand. Why are you reluctant to vote? – user24601 Jan 22 '17 at 18:00
  • @fredsbend Well it's more of psychological thing. Maybe reluctant wasn't the right word either. The posts on video.SE usually get 1~3 votes tops. On worldbuilding.SE for example, it's more like 10~30 on average, with peaks over 100 votes. The relative weight/influence of one vote on video.SE is therefore much higher than on a site with a higher average vote count. So I'm more considerate about my votes – MoritzLost Jan 22 '17 at 18:12
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    @Moritz I don't think others' propensity to vote should affect your votes. That's groupthink, not sound reasoning. – user24601 Jan 22 '17 at 19:18
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I'm pretty liberal with what I consider a "useful" answer. Even if it is not terribly "clear" or obviously shows "research" I figure that if it is worth my time to answer or even just comment then that was "useful" and it is worth an upvote.

As for using this meta site, I'm not sure how your post is a question, but as far as an actionable answer to "how to get people more engaged" in a way that is not just an opinion, upvoting and politely encouraging new users helps a lot. The SE site philosophy is not your average forum structure, but once people get hip to it, it is (obviously) a very useful resource... so it takes time.

There's no real way to discourage drive by participants and one time question askers... but even minimal participation can be useful. What I think drives people away, however, is rudeness and arrogance in answers - especially for those who do not speak English as their first language. It doesn't seem so bad here, but some SE sites are a little ...judgemental. All in all tho - I think that there's just a learning curve that will always be a factor, but the best thing to do is encourage excellence and be helpful - like editing posts and answers for clarity and keeping the focus on verifiable information.

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  • Regarding the poorly worded questions, I usually draw the line when the grammar/spelling errors are so grave that I literally can't make out what they are asking. Usually you can tell that the asker spent like 30 seconds on them and can't be bothered to even try to write properly. I've spent upwards of one hour on some of my more elaborate answers (being not a native english speaker myself, I write a bit slower in English). But if the asker expects someone to give a helpful, elaborate answer, it's not asking too much that they put some amount of effort in their question – MoritzLost Feb 3 '17 at 14:56

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