What is meta? ×

This question already has an answer here:

Over on stack-overflow, I have 2 or 3 questions that have over 1000 page views and its hard for me to believe that they only have 1 up-vote each. I am not saying my questions deserve it, but I have seen some really stupid questions that have way more, with less views. No examples at the moment, but I am sure you have all seen them... This is either due to my questions not being useful at all except for myself, or there are a lot of lurkers out there that find them in search but never take the time to sign and up-vote if they were helpful.

SO should implement a sign in after X amount of web site visits or something similar. That feature is really annoying but if cache isn't cleared then the login will persist... I don't think questions are getting represented accurately enough both positively and negatively. Who knows, maybe all my questions suck and I would be getting 100 down votes.

share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by gnat, Richard Tingle, Hugo Dozois, hims056, Aziz Shaikh Oct 10 '13 at 5:16


I'm upvoting this because I like the idea of nuking lurkers, but I'm not so sure about requiring voting. Also, I don't want to be a lurker. ;) –  Cole Johnson Oct 9 '13 at 3:37
agreed, just not sure how to implement. –  ebel Oct 9 '13 at 3:38
Why exactly do we need to get rid of lurkers? What harm are they doing? –  Bill the Lizard Oct 9 '13 at 3:38
the ecosystem of accurate up/down voting is being compromised. –  ebel Oct 9 '13 at 3:39
@BilltheLizard lurking –  Cole Johnson Oct 9 '13 at 3:39
By lurkers? That is a completely baseless claim. It doesn't even make sense. –  Bill the Lizard Oct 9 '13 at 3:42
@ebel The ecosystem is working fine. People did not upvote your questions because they did not find them useful or clear, or enough so to be worth upvoting, or your question wasn't what they were looking for so they moved on, or they did not feel they understood your question well enough to vote either way. Visits don't mean any of the visitors should have upvoted. –  doppelgreener Oct 9 '13 at 3:43
So every one coming in from a Google or DuckDuckGo search should register before they can view the question and then again forced to vote? –  random Oct 9 '13 at 3:46
@all, wouldn't they of been closed as useless or bad questions or some other SO reason by someone by now? When I was really new to the site that would happen to me immediately if it was stupid question that was not constructive, but these have been hanging around for along time. –  ebel Oct 9 '13 at 3:48
You don't even have any evidence that the people who looked at your questions and then didn't cast a vote don't cast votes regularly on other posts. –  dmckee Oct 9 '13 at 3:49
@ebel: It's quite possible that they're not bad questions (and therefore are not closed); it's just that the people stopping by to look at them (incrementing your views) aren't that interested in the question although it superficially appears relevant. –  icktoofay Oct 9 '13 at 3:50
You also can't upvote until you have 15 rep. So should we ban everyone who doesn't get 15 rep from the site after X views, or should we just give it to them for free? –  David Robinson Oct 9 '13 at 3:55
OMG, lurking has been a fundamental piece of the Internet since year zero. Why, wh y, y ¿? –  brasofilo Oct 9 '13 at 5:31
removing lurkers to view => remove lurkers to answer, not OK –  gnat Oct 9 '13 at 21:47
@gnat, Cole Johnson, Jonathan Hobbs, icktoofay, David Robinson, Makoto thanks for being constructive. For those that downvoted my questions on SO just cause I posted this one, :| really ? –  ebel Oct 9 '13 at 22:19

1 Answer 1


So...I'm interpreting this statement as, "Either my questions are only useful for me, or everyone else doesn't appreciate or understand the value in the question. And there's no way that these questions aren't just useful for me."

And you might be right. But isn't that the point? Stack Exchange was always built on a free, no signup required model. Sure, it's nice if someone decides to pay it forward, but under no circumstances are they obligated to.

I wouldn't lash out at the "lurkers", either. They're doing their role by driving attention to your question. In all honesty though, if you're more concerned about the reputation than you are the knowledge...then perhaps your focus is skewed?

share|improve this answer
Regarding your last sentance: isn't that what gameification does? –  Cole Johnson Oct 9 '13 at 13:20
I won't deny that the gameification does drive interaction with the site, but the focus of the site is to provide meaningful answers for users, not to gain hundreds of thousands of reputation points. Of course, you won't get much participation without some kind of gameification system, but I maintain that shouldn't be the absolute focus of participants. –  Makoto Oct 10 '13 at 5:39

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .