Why is it so common to find answers with more upvotes than questions?

Question

I was reading through some interesting questions this weekend and realized that there are a number of questions with less up votes than the answer. I'm intrigued about this "phenomenon". If a question triggers a very well received answer I would expect the same appreciation to the question.

Does anyone have a different point of view? Am I trying to relate things that are not related?

Answer 1

I agree with you, that if a question is worth answering then it is also worth up voting.

When questions have 2 or 3 answers each with up-votes but the question itself is sat on 0 votes, I think it could become disheartening for those who have asked the question to engage further with our site and community.

Answer 2

For questions, the up-vote button is titled "This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear".

Consider (made up examples):

• "I read that …" [Where did you read it?]
• "I read that …" [But exactly what did it say?]
• "T͟h͟i͟s͟ says that …" [The link is to a textbook; are we expected to read it all?]
• "T͟h͟i͟s͟ web page says that …" [It took me 10 minutes to find some text that might have been misread as meaning that.]
• …

Other questions:

• Have the question in the Body that's significantly different from the one in the Title.
• Have very poor spelling and grammar, and blatant typos.
• Have little or no punctuation.
• Have one monolithic paragraph.
• Ramble on without getting to the point and then expect the reader to figure out exactly what is being asked.
• …

In many cases, a posting can contain a fundamentally good question that generates some excellent answers, while itself showing no research and being poorly worded.

Those answers deserve up-votes.
The question doesn't.