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I direct your attention to this answer which has been sustained and updated over time. Reading through the answer shows how times change and improvements warrant readdressing questions and answers. In this case MATLAB has improved their engine over time and people who visited this question years ago leave with a different understanding than those today.

In cases like this of ongoing support and effort on the part of the user answering the question, I feel it's appropriate to award with multiple upvotes. Each update required some level of effort on their part and because it adds significantly to the answer, should be rewarded.

The alternatives I see is for the user to either make a new answer which will be relegated to be lower than their first answer, or delete the current answer and lose the previously gained reputation. Both of which seem to hurt Stack Overflow and the users.

It seems like a simple check on the amount of content changed/added could be done to allow an answer to be eligible for additional upvotes. I don’t see any reason to allow additional downvotes as an answer doesn't get "more wrong". I can already change from an upvote because of an edit.

I think in cases of ongoing support and in the interest of providing sustained quality, users who add substantial content to existing questions should be rewarded. What are the counterarguments or reasons for not doing this?

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  • FYI, they can't delete the answer because it's accepted. But even if they could (or they get a moderator's help), they won't lose reputation because the system doesn't deduct the earned reputation from deleted posts if they score 3 or higher and are more than 60 days old at the time they're deleted.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 12, 2023 at 16:23
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    And 237 upvotes is not enough of an award? My point being: this is all just relative. The smaller sites can have extremely well-researched and lucid answers that at times barely get 5 upvotes. It's the way this platform works. But please take a look at meta.stackexchange.com/questions/387356/…, which might be an appropriate place to suggest a fix :)
    – Joachim
    Commented Apr 12, 2023 at 16:36
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    You can't and shouldn't tell people to upvote. If you want, upvote, that's your call. Do not ask others to do that. That's their decision, and theirs alone.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Apr 12, 2023 at 17:35
  • @Joachim the quantity of upvotes is certainly a factor, but for me its more about encouraging this type of support. Many questions and answers are abandoned in place. How many python answers are stuck 10+ years in the past and new users think the answer is still the "right" thing to do?
    – Matt
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 15:21
  • @ShadowTheSpringWizard where did I say I'm telling people to vote? I want the option to additionally reward another user. Seems like bounty is the best option now. I'd like the option to simply click upvote again.
    – Matt
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 15:23
  • @Matt "rewarded with additional upvotes" implies users who upvote. Nothing else, in the current SE system, can add upvotes. (Bounty isn't upvote.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 16:11

2 Answers 2

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I'd say the answer you linked goes above and beyond the level of maintenance most people do.

Upvotes are for a post being helpful - and in theory if someone finds the answer they'd upvote it. I do realise that this doesn't solve the situation of someone using the answer multiple times over time with different versions - but this seems like a perfect opportunity for a bounty.

As a side point, the motivation to update an answer to this level is not about reputation - so in this specific case it is a technology stack OP uses and I'd guess they'd find it helpful.

I'd also posit that your proposed implementation adds an incentive for edits on edits sake over purely altruistic content improvement. In a worse case, its a great way for a user with alternate accounts to maximise (entirely illegal!) cross voting between their accounts

I'd say bounties are the way to reward people going above and beyond

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  • I agree it goes above and beyond. I think encouraging some level of continued support would benefit the community. There are many outdated answers and new questions closed as duplicates to old answers. I did not consider multiple accounts...good point there.
    – Matt
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 15:25
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Not every that is worthy should get points or badges automatically. Any good system is designed to be very efficient to handle the most common situations and it have a "meta system" responsible to handle the non-commons situations.

The referred answer is an example of an unintended use of the system. I will not qualify as good or bad, it's just something for what the system was not designed. It might be OK for few updates, but at some point it will be better to track the updates using another method. One of the thigs that is not clear is how many users are able to handle this correctly and are willing to do it this way.

Nowadays Stack Overflow (SO) has Collectives, which has a new type of content, articles. It's not available for all Stack Overflow tags. I think that this should be first reviewed in Stack Overflow Meta. It might be good to look for more cases like this in SO and other that that might have similar situations.

Regarding the discussing in Meta Stack Exchange, I think that there might be very few among the +100 sites that are part of Stack Exchange that could have similar cases. By the other hand there is another discussion that is slightly related about how to encourage to update obsolete answers, that might also should be reviewed once there are more information about how many case are like the referred answer.

By the way, don't forget that you can offer bounties (there is no limit regarding the number of them that might be offered).

Related

Collectives in Stack Overflow

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