Should GA's handed out by the person who asked the question be worth more?

No. Yes.

I don’t think it’s necessary. Any system you set up will be arbitrary. Since it doesn’t matter anyhow, why go to the trouble?

No, because then people could easily deduce who gave the GA, and that has the obvious potential to go badly.

When jellies answer my questions, I usually toss lurve out to all. So, no.

Also read what @Fly said. Logic says no.

There are many times when the asker isn’t really the best judge of the quality of the answers. He or she might just be inclined to coronate the answer that confirms his or her opinion, comes from a person he or she likes, or just “sounds right”. I mean that happens anyway as it is, but at least it doesn’t carry any more weight than a GA from someone who may actually be well informed on the matter.

^^^ Psst. Check “coronate”...

I’m of the opinion that “lurve” should be worth no more than a mere pat on the back.
Those numbers next to our names are pretty damn meaningless when all’s said & done.

@gailcalled I like his use of “coronate”!

@Nimis: So does spellcheck even though it doesn’t seem to be a real word,.

You are all right, of course. I suppose I just had to gently vent my frustration. There’ll never be a forum free of “Henny Youngman’s”. I suppose it’s just a personal pet peeve of mine. I hate that the jelly who makes a joke about something crude gets as many pats on the back as the jelly who answered thoughtfully. Then again, that’s the community’s fault, not his/hers. As a community we reward the strangest things.

Thanks for your answers (even those who didn’t really answer :) )

Like @SpatzieLover, I tend to hand out a GA to everyone that answers my questions as a kind of thank you for taking time to answer my question.

Coronate is in my WordWeb dictionary (which is of course a brilliant dictionary~).

According to Wordweb it means “Invest with regal power; enthrone.”

And now… to the drive-in!

@gailcalled Oh, good. Bellatrix actually brought a source.
I was about to pull out my best playground argument.
Nuh-uh! It is too a word! (I get a little lazy after midnight.)

@digitalimpression: What does a forum “free of “Henny Youngman’s” ’ mean?

Giving people points because they, or at least their opinions are more popular? Unfortunately many Q & A sites such as this attract certain userbases, and the problem you’re mentioning isn’t unique to fluther. I agree that the person who actually addresses the question should maybe get more lurve. This is iffy though, because what if somebody else asks a question (with a bias) which agrees with the majority of the userbase paradigm? Damn, even sometimes I’ll give an opposing view of mine a great answer vote if the point was well presented, respectful and made a point which I didn’t see until reading it.

In all fairness to the OP, I’ve been on/off here for a couple years now, and there are some people whom I’ve never (and I mean never) seen give a decent or intelligent response to any discussion on here, and get massive amounts of lurve for the majority of their answers. There are also users who never give any serious or intelligent responses, but yet insult others for taking the discussion seriously, and get more lurve for their mediocre responses derailing the thread rather than the people actually attempting to address the issue. Again, this is not unique to fluther, but I agree with your points though.

@gailcalled Henny Youngman was famous for his one-liners. There are quite a few people on fluther who think they are Henny. They aren’t, of course.. because Henny was actually funny. My point is that there will always be someone (or in this case quite a few people) who think they are knee-slappin, guffaw-inducing, comedy gold. So, instead of giving a real answer to the question, they make a silly (and often-times crude) joke. They fit into the same category as a troll as far as I’m concerned. There will never be a forum/QA site sans-troll.

@Paradox25 Your experience is similar to mine but it’s the price we pay to interact with the good people hanging out here I suppose. C’est la vie.

@digitalimpression: Ah. Personally, I never thought that he was funny; in fact, his one-liners made my teeth ache and the timbre of his voice gave me headaches.

But I agree that being amusing is an art and requires originality and finesse…rare gifts. Some flutterers have that gift; most don’t.

<throws out stupid one-liner just to be a smartass>

No, they shouldn’t, because then people would know who’s lurving who the highest, and it would turn into even more of a popularity contest. Which would defeat the purpose of anonymous lurve.

And FWIW, I like the cute, witty one-liners, and often lurve the hell out of them, regardless of relevance. That’s mainly because I have enough seriousness in my offline life, and the silly one-liners soothe me and make me laugh.

For about a day the great answer link would turn red if the person asking the question gave someone a GA. I liked the idea but it was visually jarring.

But that was back when it focused on problem solving around here. So if you got a red link you probably helped someone solve a problem they were having. Which was nice. The red link just looked like shit. It was a good idea with poor execution.

Now that the problem solving aspect of the site is virtually gone I see no need to add something like it back.

I don’t believe we can take the GA system too seriously. It is a nice element of Fluther but I certainly don’t put any stock in it in terms of GAs. As @Paradox25 it is too open to abuse (intentionally or not).

I wrote an answer the other day on a thread. My answer was one of the first five answers. It was brief and had only two sentences. It got no lurve. Yet, answers that followed and repeated exactly the same points I had made at least in part or had silly answers. Many of those subsequent answers had three or four GAs. I doubt if we let the person posing the question have more control or greater worth it would lead to a more equitable or reliable system in terms of quality.

@Bellatrix: Very possibly your large fan base had maxed out their points for you already.

Thanks @gailcalled but it should still show as a ‘Great Answer’ the lurve score just wouldn’t increase (that was my understanding anyway). I received (no idea if this is still true and I can’t be bothered looking and can’t even remember which response it was now) no good answers. It was just an example of how fickle the GA system can be and why it really isn’t worth getting too involved in it. Apart from the point @digitalimpression makes, where your answer is in the field of answers influences the number of GAs. Someone could do a whole research project on this stuff. GAs, nice if you get them but not worth getting upset about if you don’t.

Not really, at least not in my case. I try, when I remember to, to give GAs to anyone who makes an effort and takes the trouble just to answer my question; unless I really don’t like the answer… so GAs from me, on one of my questions, are kind of a freebie. So, if I didn’t give you a GA on one of your answers it may be just because I forgot or it may be because I really didn’t like your answer. Let the mystery be, I guess. :-)

No, its not like there is a prize for the right answer given out only by the OP.
The lurve will show usually by virtue of all the jellies who read the question, what the real skinny is.

This is a democratic jellydom and any change from a single vote of lurve might create chaos.

@digitalimpression You wouldn’t like sodahead then, trust me.

@Paradox25 I’m sure I wouldn’t. I never meant to sound .. degrading toward fluther. It is miles ahead of other Q/A sites. It’s just that some days I’m not in the mood for smartassery .. I guess the day I asked this question was one of those days. =)

@digitalimpression I get enough smartassery at work. Also, I probably get more of that on here than anyone. Some can get away with taking cheapshots, and everyone thinks they’re cool for it.

It is strange, because in one recent thread I actually answered a social question in the way that was asked by the author, and someone took a cheapshot at me. Other people after me hijacked the thread, but yet that was cool, and nobody called those users out on that one. Maybe I’ll take back my original post on here, and say that I agree with your idea now after that incident.