@uhoh's first two lemmas tell us that Stack Exchange is a collaborative effort to generate good answers to on-topic questions, and that answers simply can not exist without someone taking the time and showing the interest to post the question first.
Further, visibility (and up voting) of those answers to future readers (see @uhoh's lemma #3) will be to some degree modulated by the voting on the question: an intrinsically stellar answer to a question with zero votes will not be observed to shine as brightly if the question remains a red dwarf.
Even further, question askers can't start offering reputation bounties on questions until they are comfortable loosing some reputation points and bounties are good! Also, without some positive feedback like upvoting they are potentially somewhat less likely to stick around.
Therefore I'd like to ask:
Question: Why do some of our most prolific question answerers (and therefore reputation beneficiaries) rarely-to-never up vote questions they answer?
Related queries on voting behavior:
Premise:
I'm not going to name them, but after 6+ years of observing the site I'm going to simply assert that after coming across so many questions with zero votes (+0/-0) having excellent answers by a few of our most prolific answer authors, it's clear to me that this is a real thing.
1@uhoh's lemmas (from here):
- @uhoh's lemma #1: Stack Exchange is a collaborative effort to generate good answers to on-topic questions.
- @uhoh's lemma #2: A Stack Exchange answers can not exist without someone taking the time and showing the effort and interest to post the question.
- @uhoh's lemma #3: Stack Exchange is both a floor wax and a desert topping2. Asking of questions is a superposition of (at least) two things; seeking solutions to our immediate problem or query and the facilitation of interesting, helpful and informative answers for the benefit of future readers.