Moderators are not actively voting on questions/ans

Question

I don't know if this is job of moderate or not, But i feel that our Moderators are not actively part of the voting on questions / answer as compare to other stackexchange sites. Only Benny had more than 5K votes.

BennySkogberg♦   5502      elected 2013
PirateEric♦      2093      elected 2013
Robert Lindgren♦ 1373      elected 2013
SPDoctor♦        1136      elected 2011

I think our moderator should spend sometime to vote up /down on the questions/answers in order to encourage the contributors to participate in this forum.

Answer 1

I'm of the honest opinion that the moderators are of no higher a standard to upvote (or downvote) than the rest of us. It can be a slow day with little to vote up or down. Also no moderator here is getting paid to do this work, they're people with full-time jobs and families like the rest of us. I ask of their free time to make sure the really wrong things get removed, and really no more.

Answer 2

Surely we can do better (and I will surely try to do so!).

But so can almost all members here (including you it seems, giving your own voting statistics ;) ).

Given the time and effort we as community moderators are giving this community it seems a bit odd to point the finger at us as individuals though and not the community as a whole?

Sure, the argument about encouraging others is valid, but it is as valid to all members who are frequently participating in the community I think.

I (and probably all moderators) tend to spend most of the time in the community with handling flags, edits and other administrative tasks like converting answers to comments etc. This steals focus from taking an as active part as I sometimes wish in answering questions and voting on questions and answers.

When I do up- or downvote I want that vote to be based on my true feelings on the topic or the specific question. Very often I lack the time to reflect on the questions in that way, but when I do I surely up- or downvote it.

I know, for me, I tend to vote on answer much more than questions. Why that is, I have no clear answer, it is probably based on how I consume the site and use the content.

Answer 3

That's absolutely right. Moderators are the guardians of the SharePoint community and spend a lot of time here, reading a lot of questions and answers. With this time it's easy to push the voting button.

I do this all the time, and I go by these simple rules:

• if I answer a question, I think it's worth the time and the questions is good enough, and clear enough, to be answered. This makes me up vote the question (and gets me closer to the golden electorate badge).

• if I answer a question, and someone else answers it better than me, I up vote that answer. This gets me closer to the shiny sportsmanship badge which is one of 10(?) badges that are visible during an election.

• when something gets flagged, I read the question (if good +1) and other answers (if good +1).

This is the way gamification is supposed to work, so moderators and others need to live by the system. When you up vote yo also send a message that this questions/answer is worth reading and it makes our community stronger.

Vote, please!

Answer 4

Honestly, maybe I'm too stringent, but I have not seen a lot of questions or answers that are vote worthy. Most of my day is spent getting questions or answers into a legible format. If I have to edit something, it wasn't well constructed enough to warrant a vote. If anything it should be a down vote, and I'm too nice to be down voting everyone.

Admittedly, my voting has tapered off since becoming a mod. In that same time frame, I moved across the country 2 times and one of the jobs resulted in less frequent visits to sp.se. So in the little time I did have, wasn't dedicated to voting, but curating content.

Also, if we blow all our votes, we lose the ability to do certain moderator duties.