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My highest upvoted post has 8k views to it, but has 24 upvotes.

Now some might say that the questions's not so interesting but the highest upvoted question on this site has some 400+ upvotes and 82k views, so surely that question must be interesting.

Now regarding my question, it can also be said that not everybody upvotes, but the ratio of views to upvotes is 1000:3 that is per 1k views there were 3 upvotes, which I find weird.

Now I know it isn't about the upvotes and more about the knowledge we share, but I just find this extremely confusing.

So tell me why is the upvote to views ratio so odd??

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    How is anyone supposed to answer this? No one except the users who viewed those posts know why they voted (or didn't).
    – Null Mod
    Mar 10 at 17:31
  • I don't think I see what is weird (typo in title!) here. That highly viewed q. would have a tiny amount of upvotes? It's not like people without account (or with minimal rep.) can vote. Another thing is that quality has hardly anything to do with views, at least it has less to do than votes. If votes were just proportional to views then there would be no point in this system. That there unfortunately is quite a bit of a correlation is undermining the system.
    – Mithoron
    Mar 11 at 1:02
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    Doesn't seem weird or odd. Can you clarify why you think that's weird or odd?
    – galacticninja
    Mar 11 at 1:04
  • @galacticninja - It seems odd to me that there's such a huge drop-off. Reddit (for example) had a drop-off rate from views to votes of about 5%. A question with 87000 views would expect to get about 4000 votes. By comparison, SE has a drop-off rate of around .04%, dramatically lower by a factor of more than ten.
    – Valorum
    Mar 11 at 8:46
  • @Valorum, my main motive of this question was to actually draw comparison between reddit and this site but comparing them felt unjust because we have much less users and popularity so I removed the reddit part. but your point further clarifies my question
    – shanu
    Mar 11 at 13:22
  • @Mithoron, all I am saying is that even if take 1000 people viewed the question and for the sake of simplicity 500 people actually read the question, out of the 500 I believe even then 20 upvotes would be weird
    – shanu
    Mar 11 at 13:26
  • I always assumed it also takes into account random visitors which don't have accounts either. That would explain why my question about a list of all Voight Kampff questions attracts so many views, because people have been searching for a list of questions all this time or something.
    – Clockwork
    Mar 12 at 0:56

1 Answer 1

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Newly registered users can't vote straight away

It's not that the ratio is weird, it's that this is a different website with a different purpose.

You need 15 rep to vote up on something, which is almost nothing, unless you're brand new to the site.

The 10k user site tools make that really clear. In the last year the ratio of upvotes vs. positive feedback was about 1:1000.

If you're right about the views:upvotes ratio being 1000:3, then on average 1/3 of the people viewing the question would have upvoted this if they had the privilege.

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  • Similar websites have an engagement (view to vote) ratio of about 5%, not 33%
    – Valorum
    Mar 11 at 10:29
  • @AncientSwordRage, so basically are you asserting that nearly 8000 people had less than 15 rep?
    – shanu
    Mar 11 at 13:18
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    Note that, thanks to HNQ, highly-visited questions are likely to have a higher percentage of low-rep users than the average.
    – DavidW
    Mar 11 at 13:26
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    @shanub or weren't even registered
    – AncientSwordRage Mod
    Mar 12 at 1:52
  • Perhaps mentioning that the question has entered HNQ that was shown on almost all SE sites and thus usually skew the views may clarify the case, in case the OP didn't notice it :)
    – Andrew T.
    Mar 13 at 1:17
  • @DavidW, what about questions with 600-900 views, I reckon they dont enter HNQ
    – shanu
    Mar 14 at 5:49
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    @shanu You can check if a post goes HNQ, it's recorded in the timeline.
    – DavidW
    Mar 14 at 11:13

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