Hello.

Can I have a "word" with you?

Hang on

OK

That's better - I had to reopen the window

What can I do for you?

Well, I'm a new user here. I have made thorough answers, but it seems they are ignored.

On the other hand I see high rep users taht make simple answers and get many votes.

My question is:

That, I'm afraid, is the nature of Stack Exchange.

Can my answers be sponsored by a high rep user to get more votes?

While most people do vote on the post rather than the person there is a significant minority who will vote up the person.

However the corollary is that high rep users do tend to produce answers that are worthy of up votes.

I'd like to provide an example here: math.stackexchange.com/questions/105276/…

That's an answer I made some days ago.

A word of warning - I don't have an account on Maths so I won't know if your answer is better or worse than any others.

Ok, but you can read it?

Several things will govern whether your answer gets up-votes or not.

a) is it correct? I'm assuming that you do provide correct answers.

b) is it first? First answers tend to get more up-votes than later ones.

c) is it complete? The more complete you can make your answer the better. Editing is good - I see that you've edited that answer.

d) is it timely? This is related to being first, but also to the time between the question being posted and your answer being posted. If don't post your answer until several days after the question then the OP might have moved on. The question will always get bumped to the home page, but this leads on to:

e) are you posting when everyone else is asleep? I don't know how international the user base of Maths is but if you answer when there aren't many people around then you won't get much attention.

I'm in GMT -3:00, so timing might be a problem.

Questions tend to be ordered by date?

f) are you answering questions in obscure tags? This is the "bikeshed" problem in reverse. If you post an answer on a "bikeshed" question then everyone who sees it feels they can have an opinion. If it's an obscure question then only the OP, you and a handful of other people might be qualified or even interested in the answer.

Right. What does OP stand for?

@Peter They're ordered by activity on the home page. So if you post when there are few people around by the time everyone else comes online your question/answer has dropped off the home page.

@Peter Original Poster

Ok. I understand.

Thanks for your time then.

Another concern, kind os a PS

Do we have a private messaging system, like in forums?

Keep plugging away. Luck does play an important part.

@Peter No. Which is by design.

The focus of the sites is meant to be the questions and answers. It's one of the reasons there's a cc-wiki license - so the "community" owns everything.

So I should always use the chat right? I mean if I want to communicate with a user.

Use comments too. Ask for clarifications etc. there on the site. However, don't use them for chat, use chat for that :)

That's what I mean. Ok, thanks!

*meant

@peter You can edit your last message (for up to 5 minutes) just press the up arrow.