With this quotation from Voltaire in mind, should the point system be revised?

Pity the mods, since they are all that lies between us and oblivion,

Much of the point of Fluther is to get an answer for a question. Therefore, you are asking the community for their assistance.

As they are the ones providing a service to you, it makes sense that one would get more for answering or responding rather than the other way around. So I think that the disparity makes sense.

There are certainly plenty of people who get lots of pleasure from jumping into a thread without giving lurve to the person who started the fun.
I am sure that we have all noticed that.
Noticed who they are too.
I would simply remind folks who get into it on a thread to remember to “thank the host”

I too think that excellent questions should result in more lurve than they get today.

Why does it matter? It’s only lurve. Last I knew, it would take all the lurve I have and 50 cents to buy me a phone call…. if I could find a public phone.

I’ve always thought that the more impressive feat is an interesting and well crafted question.

I think they should be the same. A stupid question is just as valuable as a stupid answer. The system is inherently flawed just because there are people who desire to have more than others for whatever reason.

no

I agree.If I answer a Q,I usually give points to it.
I have seen some very thought provoking questions on this site as well as very funny ones.It’s the people and their diverse thoughts are what keep me coming back.I have made some very nice friends here. :))

I agree with Voltaire as IMO, a question is a truer representation of that persons thoughts, ideas and even mores.

If you use Fluther as an example, the answers here are often knee-jerk reactions or even cut and pastes to questions that were given time and thought to create. it takes many minutes to ask a question here and only seconds to reply. I GQ almost every question I reply to out of respect for the OP’s time and effort to do so.

I only hand out GQs to questions I find thought provoking or that take me some time and effort to find an answer, regardless if I submit an answer to it or not.

Completely agree. 5 lurve for great questions and 3 lurve for great answers.

I think I should be asked, immediately after I write an answer, whether I want to lurve the Q.

I almost always forget.

aside from that, I don’t really care about the value of the points, more the number of people who appreciate what another has asked or answered. Perhaps they should be worth the same, or even separately counted…

I’m biased because I’m not the kind of person to ask questions. But, nope!
Like @wundayatta says, it’s not like the lurve is really worth anything. If anyone is using this site for the sake of raising their lurve score, they’re doing it for the wrong reason.

Does not matter….to me, anyways. I have never really thought about it. I do give out way more GA ‘s than GQ’s, though. A question really has to strike me for me to think to GQ it.

Me agree.

dammit!!

It depends. The goal of Fluther is to help. The question helps because it may touch on a subject that other people would like to know the answer to, a.k.a people think the thread is important. People reward important threads by rewarding the question. Answers help because they provide the information and help the people who want to know the answer to the question. People reward answers when they provide information that they want to know or agree with. Without the question there are no answers, no spreading of knowledge. Without answers, the questions may inspire the reader, but there is still no spreading of knowledge, which is only possible with an answer. So, is one more important than the other, or do we need both to succeed?

My answer is no.

I agree that a crafting an excellent question on fluther is apt to be more of an achievement than posting a typical answer. And my own personal view has always been that questions are a vital force in life, far more important than answers. My father taught me this when I was very small, and I have never doubted it.

However, I think the very idea of creating finely crafted questions just for the sake of asking questions is an evolved concept. Initially the point was (wasn’t it?) for people who were in search of answers to be able to pose their questions and receive responses. It’s only because responders have come to look to the questions as a source of entertainment that a value has been placed on questions. Otherwise the answers are a service being performed, and in any transaction it’s the service providers and not the customers who get paid.

So I don’t think that an attitude about interesting, well-written questions is enough of a reason to change the point system, and certainly not enough of a reason to introduce the chaos and consternation that I imagine would follow if the meaning of the points changed. The only possible mitigating step following on a revised rating system would be to recompute all past awards and retroactively adjust all points for everyone.

You can’t have answers if there are no questions. Questioners won’t bother to ask questions if there are no answerers. Well, perhaps they might ask those huge philosophical questions that are unanswerable, but the practical ones would be a waste of time.

I see asking questions as a service to the community. People don’t want to be bored. They much prefer to be challenged. People, I believe, want to think about interesting things.

Questions are what direct people to learn more. Often, an answerer must research the answer, and in the process of that research, the answerer will probably learn much more than just the answer to the question.

There are other kinds of questions that ask for opinion more than for information. I think those are the most interesting kind of questions. They ask people to make choices; sometimes very difficult choices. There are also questions that ask people for data—personal data. It’s different than advice. It’s asking for people’s experience with an issue.

These are the kinds of questions I like to ask. I’m not really interested in anyone telling me what I should do. I will make my own choices. But I am interested in other people’s experience and in why they made the choices they did.

I think questions are crucial and that they are much more than entertainment. They are teachers. They are guides. They give this place meaning. They give most places meaning, but that’s not the point.

I think that most people will admit that there are a lot of bad questions here. Some are insipid and poorly thought out, and it is not at all clear what the questioner is after.

I have a preference for the kinds of questions I want to see. I figure that the best way to get questions I want to see is to model them. I’m not saying my questions have any more value than any other questions. I’m just saying that, for my own stimulation, I want questions like the kind I write.

I feel that I have seen a change in the way people ask questions over the time I have been writing my models. I could be deluded, but that’s what I think. I feel like when I left, questions started to grow more insipid, and that that has changed since I’ve been back. That’s just my opinion, and I’m sure many would disagree, but I’m only here for what I’m here for, and I’ll do whatever I can to make this place more interesting to me.

I don’t think I’m being totally selfish, because I think others also like the kind of questions I write and they appreciate the impact that they perceive I have on this place. We could all be deluded, of course.

The point of all this is to say that I do make up questions in order to serve the community. I do think it is a service, and I think it helps make this place something more pleasing to other people besides me. Whether or not it does that in anyone else’s opinion, it works for me. I hope it works for others, too. If it does work for others, it’s more likely that I’ll get what I want, too.

I think that the answerers are customers, too. They hunger for good questions. They get tired of saying the same thing over and over. It gets boring. Providing good questions helps keep good folks interested, and it keeps them here, and it improves the overall quality of the place.

Now I don’t just make up questions to make them up. They are always something I am interested in. But I do sometimes look around for issues that I think might be interesting, and then I ask about something that interests me as far as that issue is concerned. I don’t think I could make up a question that I didn’t care about. Why would I bother? Hmmm. There’s a question.

I say all this because I think questions are very valuable here, and because of that, I try to provide good questions for people to bite into. Mostly they don’t seem to work, but every once in a while I get a hit. I do all this without being concerned about lurve. I’d write questions if there were no lurve. Answers, too. I enjoy asking and answering. I enjoy being of service to others. It gives me a little bit of a high when people tell me my answer made a difference or that they really like my questions.

I would be happy if the entire lurve system went away. I don’t really like it at all because it does rank people and because I am competitive, it makes me do things I wouldn’t otherwise do—like answer questions I don’t care about. Without lurve, I would be much happier.

But most other people seem to like or need some kind of points system. They seem to answer for the lurve instead of just because it is rewarding in and of itself. I understand that, but I wish it weren’t like that. Like I say, I’ve been sucked into the game and I don’t like myself when that happens. You might say that I could just ignore it, and perhaps I could. But the effort it would require to ignore it is greater than the effort required to play it, so what’s the point?

Now the process of writing this has made a question occur to me, so I’m going to go off and write it instead of writing about some of the things lurve has inspired me to do.