I'm learning a lot from this site and would love to vote on some of the really excellent posts here, but I'm at a reputation of 1. If anybody would be so inclined to give me an upvote here I would be happy to start voting.

You can review my rep and voting on my SO page:

http://stackoverflow.com/users/116/mark-harrison

You need 15 rep to upvote. It took me a little while to get that... but I upvoted your question, so you'll be that much closer :-)

I am trying to upvote, but yeah we need more rep points ;)

Perhaps they need a way to get the point economy started. It is hard to value questions an answers when they all have 0 votes. Perhaps they could allow people to vote on question until a total of, say, 1000 point of rep are awarded.

I have been doing some poking around some of the StackExchange sites, as a long time StackOverflow user, I am not used to not being able to vote.

This site appears to have enough rep around to start to function like it is supposed to work. I know of a site where there is a net of 10 points earned and where the "Tumbleweed" is the most popular badge.

OK, good point. I'll do more of that. This posting was useful in that I wasn't sure what the voting was about or why I should bother, so thanks for that.

Scott

In addition to up-voting good questions and answers, I've also been a little more generous here up-voting people with only 1 or 11 reputation so they could get to the threshold of 15 that would enable them, in turn, to vote for others. You can find these people by looking at the user list, which is sorted by reputation.

So folks, please vote! The OP is right, the voting improves the experience with this platform.

You also need a certain number of points to add new tags I see (is that 15 points as well?) which was slightly annoying as a question I just posted required a new tag.

I realized that you needed knew that you needed a certain amount of reputation to upvote so was worried that I could only upvote a limited number of times.

The reason why there is less vote here I reckon because some of the question is really subjective. This is quite different compared to stackoverflow where you can get one definite answer.

I think to make new users to be able to vote is to up-vote a question. That way new user will have some point in the bank.

This question is old and for some (like me) the voting concept is new. Think about how many are not enmeshed in web2.0 like I guess you guys are - LOL. Plus At this point apparently I have a teacher badge and it says I should check my profile... um - some day I might. Plus to vote I have to login... again - some day :)

Great site though, Dharmesh - which is why I don't mind answering.

I would add that it's very useful for people to get many perspectives - not necessarily to have other people vote on previous answers for them (yet?). If the voting is truly helpful to you, you might want to communicate to everyone (say in a LinkedIn discussion - or even via a new question/answer here) why it's important to [go through the trouble and] vote.

Cheers

hahaha this is a great question. Congratulations Dennis!

Now more seriously. I know that it would be nice to have more positive votes, but scarcity sometimes is what makes good stuff more valuable. So my answer is about moderation. I do want people to vote, but at the same time, I want people to vote ONLY for what they HONESTLY believe is a good answer. Otherwise, everybody´s reputation will be artificially inflated and therefore useless (pretty much like grades in grad school).

There are a number of posts about this on meta.stackexchange.com - see, for instance, this one. I would post links to others but as a newbie I'm limited to one/message. Hmm...

Interestingly, another StackExchange-based startup-oriented site I just started poking around in (startups.com) has exactly the same problem. Worse yet, some people have given me great answers for my questions there, and I can't vote for them!

Does anyone have experience with other Q&A sites? Is this particular to the ones focused on start-ups (perhaps because the questions asked tend to be more subjective and have no right answer), or is it just a function of age? Terribly ironic if communities of people distinguished by their ability to get new companies off the ground are not getting, well, the community off the ground...

I also suffered the "couldn't create new tags" problem, so if anyone wishes to upvote this answer to give me new powers, feel free.

I am in the same boat with only 1 point. I posted a few answers already. And I feel they deserve at least a point each :)

See here: http://answers.onstartups.com/users/2694/bill-paetzke