Why do people vote stupid on this site?

Question

Ever since I first joined this site I've wondered why people upvote, downvote, and remove or change their previous votes trying to maintain some kind of control over how many votes a single question/answer/etc has on here.

There's never been a single time I've visited this site without noticing it as it happened at least once.

Some Person : "Hmm, that's the right answer 'That Person' just posted. It has zero votes. So, yeah, I'll upvote it."

Some-Other Person : "Yep, 'That Person' is right on that answer they just posted, I think I'll upvote that because it's the right answer."

Some Person : (goes back to the topic 'That Person' had answered in...) "Wtf? Ugh. Somebody else voted this correct answer up again? Pft. It's not worth two upvotes, I don't care if it's right or not. I'm taking mine back off there."

... I don't think I need to make more examples, I'm sure everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about. So, what's the reason for this behavior? A correct answer is a correct answer, a good question is a good question, and so-on.

Answer 1

Answer by meat5000 · Mar 12, 2016 at 10:33 AM

Some of this comes down to a site bug. Sometimes clicking the vote buttons gives 2 votes instead of 1 and the system can take up to an hour to resolve itself. Sometimes when this happens the user will think "Wtf" and remove their vote in order to attempt to leave 1 instead of the erroneous 2 votes. This will in time resolve to 0 votes, unbeknownst to that user.

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Owen-Reynolds · Mar 12, 2016 at 02:31 PM 0

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I noticed this happening for a while last year to every single upvote. It always, always gave two. But if you just hit refresh, it showed that it was really only one. I haven't seen it for months, but I assumed it was more of a browser/ti$$anonymous$$g bug (since refresh fixed it,) so I guess it could be affecting other people.

Lo0NuhtiK Owen-Reynolds · Mar 17, 2016 at 04:19 PM 0

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Nah, I was talking about what I said, not the bug you guys mention. As far as refreshing pages goes, I do that often, bouncing between tabs and such.

Started this topic the other day after I saw someone answer a question, they got an upvote from someone else, then I upvoted them, then I came back a few $$anonymous$$utes later and the first voter had retracted their upvote; and like I said above, I've noticed people doing this kind of stuff since 2011 or so.

It doesn't really matter I guess, but I thought votes influenced search results to bring up the best content first (in which case it does matter for anyone looking for something), but either way there isn't anything to be done about it. I mainly posted this topic to see if any of them would give a decent reason for doing it.

meat5000 ♦ Lo0NuhtiK · Mar 17, 2016 at 08:50 PM 1

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In that respect you are correct. People regulating the karma. Its a case of you deserve an upvote but your post really wasnt worth more than that. Its actually easier to get upvotes for making a clever quip that leaving a good answer, ive noticed.

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Why do people vote stupid on this site?

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