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If you look on the main page of pets.stackexchange, almost all questions have a really high upvote rate. I have two questions;

  1. is this normal for a beta stackexchange site?
  2. If not, should something be done about it?

It seems like the questions might deserve some upvotes, but that is because they are very generic "How do I bathe my cat?", "How can I train my dog to do ______________?" etc. A question that may be very popular and easily Googled for the proper answer. I'm looking for some insight as to if this is normal or not, or if anybody noticed.

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    There are more users than there are new questions for a day, giving more opportunities for questions to be evaluated. On SO, the stack... overflows... with posts to vote. You have more posts per minute than you could possibly evaluate in a day. – JoshDM Nov 4 '13 at 19:30
  • I am glad to see you bring this topic to the table, I think there is some voting on personalities and popular opinion rather than useful contributions to the internet. I think people have upvoted in enthusiasm – user87 Nov 7 '13 at 4:32
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During the initial private beta phase there was a mad dash to create questions and vote, with a lot of enthusiasm as a part of it (Pets was especially enthusiastic). So many of us used up our entire voting allotment daily as a part of that initial dash. That has slowed down, the question upvote is not as strong as it was.

Much of that is about establishing some higher reputation users during the beta phase to enable some of the moderator tools and establish a group of users that can help to form the "culture" of the site. You need some of that to build out wikis, edit and support the editing, etc. Until that happens, the Community Managers shoulder the burden. During the main beta phase, where we are now, the pro-tem mods are appointed and there is a reasonable base of users that can assist.

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    Not only that, but people tend to upvote what they find interesting or helpful, and in a culture where we all love our pets and find them interesting and fascinating, it might lend to more voting activity. – Ash Nov 4 '13 at 18:37
  • Ah, okay. Makes sense. I kind of see that on StackOverflow (where I'm originally from) where questions from three years ago, which would nowadays be closed as too broad or off-topic, have 30+ votes. Didn't think of it like that. Thanks for the clarification. – Jace Cotton Nov 4 '13 at 18:38
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    @JaceCotton - You're welcome. Here to help. One of the nice things about being a moderator is that we get more direct notification of meta questions so that we can respond quickly. – John Cavan Nov 4 '13 at 18:42
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    I can only expand on Ashley's comment. It is far easier for me to relate to or understand a question about a topic I have no expertise on here on pets compared to many other sites. I upvoted questions on cats, reptiles or even specific dog breeds I never even heard of, simply because I was able to understand the problem (which often isn't the case on more technical sites). – Baarn Nov 4 '13 at 19:07

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