My "Then fix it dear Henry"-type answer get massively upvoted

Question

Sometimes I read questions here on the site which require thought, and empathy, and are helped much by varigated experience. And if I have an answer for those, I'm glad to get some upvotes (and I often do).

But quite a few questions on the site really seem to me like "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza"-type questions. And if I provide a "Then fix it, dear Henry" answer, occasionally those get massively upvoted, as if I've found a cure for cancer.

Here's a recent example:

Q: Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do?
A: You're not even in the same university, so do nothing.

I think it's ridiculous this gets over 60 upvotes within a couple of days while, say, this answer or this one have barely a single upvote.

Am I wrong to perceive this as anomalous, or undesirable?

Edit: Trivial answers win again... reputation for nothing, badges for free.

Answer 1

It seems like this is common. In the SE system, the questions that get the most views (and hence upvotes) are the clickbait ones: those that end up in the hot network questions list, and/or those that tend to attract strong, polarized opinions (for instance, those about sexism, just to cite a recent example).

In other SE sites this effect is even more pronounced. In Mathoverflow, for instance, the most popular questions are superficial questions on recreational math games, or "soft questions" on writing papers, or "big list of all examples of ". A genius answer on a deep, technical topic will typically get you ten votes or fewer. In Physics.se, an enlightened discussion on the fine points of quantum field theory will attract much less attention than a simple explanation on "why does a feather fall slower than a ball".

I find that this is true also with academic papers: my most cited papers are not the ones I am most proud of --- and every time I speak about this fact with a colleague they tell me that it's the same for them.

It's just life, in my view. The most popular movies or songs are not the favorite ones by critics. The politicians that get the most votes are not the most suited persons to run a country. And we could go on listing examples forever.

I don't think there is an easy way to fix this phenomenon. The only ideas that spring to my mind are a more nuanced rating system (bad-meh-good-genius), or a "pagerank-like" voting system (the votes of "experts" on a given topic count more). Both ideas would change SE radically, though.

Answer 2

Q: Is life fair; more specifically, does the work I do which I highly value get the same recognition as a quick one-off that happened to go viral?

A: Nope. cf. Charles Dodgson

Answer 3

You are being a bit superficial when you describe your example answer. It was, IMO, more constructive and helpful than the somewhat derisory "then fix it dear Henry" would suggest.

So I think you earned the points fair and square.

And in any case, sometimes people need to get a straight and simple answer like that and the votes are, I suspect, for you being the one who phrased it best.

Even the OP in that case accepted the answer.

So, somewhat in the same vein as "well fix it dear Henry", drop the guilt trip and accept the points as a mark of respect for your common sense from the OP and your fellow users.

I think it's ridiculous this gets over 60 upvotes within a couple of days

One of the examples you gave of a post you seem to think got few votes but perhaps deserved more (remember that's a decision for other people to make, not you !), was made 2 days after the higher voted accepted answer. I think perhaps you have to accept that stuff falls off the radar for most people.

That doesn't make your post less useful (and someone clearly thought they were), so I think you may need to treat this as karma that balances out - you got more points that you think you should for one answer, and less for another couple - the net effect was maybe just right.

Personally I am constantly surprised by which answers get votes and which don't on SE generally. It's never quite what I expect and often the highest votes I get will be on answers which I regard as trivial or obvious.

Answer 4

I think your upvoted answer deserves its votes, even though it was easier to write than the others you link to.

This kind of effect often happens on the more technical SE sites: short, easy to understand answers to beginner questions get a bunch of votes; difficult, technical answers to highly specific questions take an hour or two to write get crickets and tumbleweed, because it's not worth the effort for most people to read them.

Broadly speaking, the two effects balance each other out. Look at your rep as a whole and think of the rep you got but "didn't deserve" for this question as making up for the rep you "deserved" but didn't get on the other questions.