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Well, first I had to vote your question up...

I've never hung out on StackOverflow, so I'm not really acquainted with what it's like. From what I can see here though, I think we're dealing with a chicken/egg question. Are we not getting votes because there are so few views or, are we not seeing the views on certain topics because there isn't enough voting? Hard to know. I lean towards the chief problem being the number of eyeballs. However, I will try to remember to vote more often.

My take on this is that the 'new user experience' is actually largely as a result of somebody googling a question - StackExchange based sites are very well suited to getting high organic search results, and it shows - a lot of the questions here already rank highly on google.

So for me, the key to getting the community more active is to try and convert the googlers into regulars - and I do think that upvoting questions does help with that. BUT I don't think it does the site any good to be upvoting questions which are ill-conceived and/or not well thought out.

One other currently untapped source of quality members would be to try and tempt some more of the 'mainstream' SSC users to participate here. I have to say I'm extremely glad to see the people that are here contributing so well, and I have personally learnt from all of you - and I would hope that some of the more mainstream users could have the same experience. Maybe one way to do that might be to include a precis of the questions asked in the SSC newsletter - that would hopefully encourage people across to come in, earn reputation etc. However, that would obviously be totally up to Steve to decide...

I think you could also increase the interest in the site by having the 'Gurus' (anyone over 2k rep ??) add community based questions. If they are looking for a best practice answer then the rep can be given to the responses according to recommended guidlines and spark off so conversation about why people should / shouldnt do what is included in the answers.

Once you cross the first few thresholds that let you do basic things (such as being able to upvote yourself) then I think the score for a person should be irrelevant. I try not to care about my overall number of points.

On the other hand, the score for an answer can matter. For someone who is really unsure of the correct (or best out of several correct options) the number of points that answer got is a much better indicator than which one was actually selected.

So, in short I tend to be fairly liberal with what I upvote, but only when the answer is genuinely helpful and preferably the best one posted for that question yet.

I think this is a very good topic, but perhaps we could expand it to "How can we (as frequent supporters of this site) most effectively promote the site? I realize that is a very broad topic, but I think it's helpful to consider all possibilities.

As I see it, there are 3 basic groups of people that use this site:

1) The "gurus" with over 2,000 reputation: I believe all of us in this group tend to use the site more to help others than to request help for ourselves. Personally, I do it because I like the satisfaction of helping someone and the kind words from various users regarding helpful answers I have provided. Like Håkan, I also hope to gain some recognition through my participation here, and that was very true during the interview process for the new job I recently started.

2) The mid-level active users who have questions but also want to help others when possible: I believe this is the group we should most focus on, and I believe this is the group most influenced by the distribution of points. I completely agree with the suggestion of more seeder questions and Matt's excellent (+1) suggestion that gurus agree not to answer those questions for the first week. That would give this middle group more opportunities to share their knowledge and hopefully get the satisfaction associated with others (including gurus) acknowledging intelligent answers.

3) The once or occasional user with a quick question: Maybe some of these people will move to group 2; maybe not. The best way to help them, though, is to provide good, quick answers. Contrary to the waiting period for seeder questions, this means gurus actively participating (as we have been) to provide good answers to these questions ASAP. In addition, since these users are more often than not coming here via a search engine, improved search hits will help them as well if their question (or a similar one) was previously asked. We are up to almost 1,000 questions now!

I think it's important to emphasize as well that voting should be done (upwards) where an answer is useful. And the reverse.

The term voting is a bit misleading as it suggests that 'out of the possible answers, which one gets your vote', whereas it's more about awarding points to those answers that contain some useful info with regards to the question.

It's not uncommon to have the same answer albeit worded differently, posted in very quick succession by 2 people. If they are both right, then they should both get a vote. It's up to the OP as to which they choose as the answer. Generally I'd go for the one that gives the right answer, possibly with some supporting info, links, examples, etc. over other less 'complete' answers.

There was a bit of blurb in the faq page about this, but where has the link to the faq page gone? I don't have it at the top near my name - I'm sure it used to be there?

Sorry to dredge up an old question but I was wondering how many votes you were allowed in one day? I can't see such information in the FAQ or any other areas of the site.

I am quite generous with my handing out of votes because I feel it helps the site grow.