I must admit that if I cast a vote for a question, it is much more likely to be a down or close vote, or both. I don't know if that makes me a curmudgeon.

@MichaelHarvey What qualities do make you upvote questions? I've been giving more weight lately to whether the questions have answers that are interesting than to whether they are interesting to me (if the question is otherwise well-formed).

I tend to upvote well-written, clear, focused questions that show signs of research and at least some thought on the part of the questioner, and particularly where the answer is not obvious.

@MichaelHarvey I think it's important for a question to include some attempt to explain what the author is thinking. I don't mind too much if the answer seems obvious to me as a native speaker. I think some answers are only obvious if you know them :)

I'm unsure your purpose here. Are you asking people who read that question and didn't upvote it why they didn't upvote it? Or asking for opinions why? Or is lack of upvotes for otherwise well-received questions a topic you want to draw attention to generally? Or something else?

@gotube I would like to know what sort of guidance we can give askers to earn those upvotes. This question had a reasonable amount of effort put into it in my opinion, and spurred 4 answers, so I'm wondering what more it needed to do to get upvoted. It became a hot network question, so it's not a great example any longer I guess. I think it would be good to just discuss as a community our standards for upvoting.

It's become the norm the only ELL questions which earn >2 upvotes are those that ride on the Hot Network Ferris wheel. It is the folk outside the ELL community who get excited and cast votes. They tend to be original questions which spur users to exclaim "Oh yeah, I'd never thought 'bout that before" Qs with a quirk, a twist on something that native speakers take for granted. Users who answer assiduously are nearly always the same native speakers, they generally post good answers so it's easier to upvote their contributions rather than the askers. Unless your name is a certain Tom...

A tangent, but I'm always surprised at people who answer questions, then don't upvote them. If I can't stomach to upvote a question, I won't answer it. Overwhelmingly answerers get the most upvotes --as it should be since they provide the value-- but I think expecting there should be at least one upvote per answer is reasonable.

@gotube it’s reasonable to answer a question that you think doesn’t deserve an upvote. I’d find it odd for someone to downvote or close vote a question they answered though.

There's nothing like threads in Meta purporting to tell me how to vote to make me do the exact opposite.

@MichaelHarvey I hope you don't feel like that's what I am trying to do with this post. I don't like being pressured to behave a certain way either. I'm genuinely interested in different people's approaches to voting. The only "wrong" way to cast a vote on SE is to target a user instead of their posts.

I very much prize the anonymity of the voting system on SE, and I particularly resist any pressure to explain downvotes. I try to cast votes purely to make questions or answers rise or sink, and not to reward or punish. It is absolutely wrong to target a user.

@MichaelHarvey I think anonymous voting is absolutely essential to this system. My husband drove Uber for a while, and the rider could immediately see what a driver rated them and could retaliate. Rider ratings in that system were pretty useless because driver rating under 4.8 of 5 gets them throttled and eventually kicked off the system. When I do take the time to explain my downvote it never helps. I get accused of picking on people. Also, I tend not to want to spend more effort on a post than the author did.

I've never used Uber, and one reason is that I hear stories of riders' cards being billed for 50 to 100 UK pounds for fake cleaning charges.

I'm talking about genuine cases. No glitter. No puke.

@MichaelHarvey I didn't mean to imply they weren't. The company who is taking a cut as the middle man fails to protect riders from bad drivers and drivers from bad riders is all I meant. A lot of drivers aren't the ones actually vetted by Uber. One person gets approved, and then a group drives the car 24/7. Lots of stuff like that.

Oh I see what you mean. It happens in the UK. A group may use the same name and share the car and also driver's license as well.