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Often I regret spending the time to answer a question because the user who asked the question goes missing. No, comments/replies, up/downvotes, no marking as answer or anything. Should there be a rule or penalty established for this type of behavior?

Perhaps, not visiting or participating in your Stackexchange will cause demotions and loss of reputation? Just some ideas...

What can we do to motivate all users to participate?

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This has been discussed before. Most users are looking for an immediate answer and will not want to be a part of a community with voting and acknowledging contributions.

They ask, you answer, they learn. But they will not necessarily acknowledge your answer. If you can't handle that, stop answering. If you want to contribute solutions, regardless of reputation, keep answering.

see: Are SharePoint.SE users lazy voters?

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    This is spot on! All we can do is to try to get people to feel the need to be part of the community, and try out best to use upvotes etc. to give contributors credit for their work and effort :)
    – Robert Lindgren Mod
    Commented Dec 29, 2013 at 14:12
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    I agree, this is indeed the main essence of this forum. However, part of the enjoyment of assisting fellow users is to hear about the outcome and ensure their questions have truly been answered. Also, down votes with no comments or explanation can only mislead users from a potentially correct answer to their question. The really beauty of this forum is the collaboration of users with their personal knowledge, and experience that they can share with fellow users.
    – Haroun A.
    Commented Dec 31, 2013 at 1:43
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    I think one way to encourage voting in others is to vote ourselves. If a question is worth answering, it's worth an up vote from the person writing the answer. If we vote and encourage others for their participation, the community will change in this respect.
    – Robert Kaucher
    Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 3:35
  • I found a case where a user is regular has asked more than 100 questions but has very low acceptance rate. It may be the user is not getting what he wants but should leave the feedback in the comments at least.
    – Nadeem Yousuf-AIS
    Commented Jan 22, 2015 at 14:33
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Even if you did punish them, "they" wouldn't care because there not coming back so your only hurting yourself. Perhaps you could just make it more apparent that It considered polite to upvote if it was helpful

edit: I think it behooves the entire stack environment to resist the urge to be seen as snotty and elitist as much as possible. 100 people may come and go but if you can keep just one with a good attitude (as frustrating as the other 99 may be) it is a step in the right direction

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I'm new to this site and I have asked a question, but with my low reputation, I have no possibility to reward the answers to this questions by upvoting.

I noticed that compared to other stack exchange sites, questions are only very rarely upvoted. But that's another topic, I think.

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    I agree. Like I said in another comment, if a question is worth answering, it is worth and up vote from the people who answer.
    – Robert Kaucher
    Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 3:36
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    it's really frustrating IMHO. I'm not a very frequent user, but I'm a member for more than a year, asked >20 questions and still have earned +6 reputation in this time. I don't have much deep SharePoint knowledge yet, so I can not really answer questions, but still I think this is not very motivating for new users.
    – mBBe
    Commented Apr 17, 2015 at 9:11
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Just add another voting system. One for the questioner to mark as the answer, and one for the community to up-vote it as a solid or viable solution. So, even if the questioner doesn't mark a solution as the answer, the person who answered still gets the gratification or support from the community, and other people don't overlook possible great solutions. Win/win all around.

Think of Rotten Tomatoes, you have the 'critics' votes and then the community votes.

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    This is how it works already! Any user (with at least 15 rep) can upvote questions and answers. So, if you see a good question or a good answer, use the power of upvoting :) Every single upvote gives the user reputation points! If we start a movement of really trying to use our votes well and often, I think the ball will keep moving faster and faster.
    – Robert Lindgren Mod
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 17:00

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