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I really do not understand why you would not take the time to upvote a question that you spent time answering. The question has obviously given you pause for thought (especially true for questions on this site, where answers are rarely simple).

Can someone explain why this happens to me?

Note: I'm not talking specifically about HNQs.

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While I would personally always up vote a question that I take the effort to answer (in part because the question doing well will ultimately attract more attention for my answer as well) I can imagine that some people would consider certain questions not notable enough to be worth an up vote. But still possess the knowledge to provide an answer that will help the asker.

This is a valid way to use your votes. Just because a question is answerable, doesn't mean it's a particularly good question that should be seen by as many people as possible.

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  • $\begingroup$ I should mention that This question was inspired by me (jokingly) complaining that my question had received more answers than up votes over at the chat. $\endgroup$
    – overactor
    Oct 27 '14 at 14:37
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    $\begingroup$ Yes. While I haven't done this here, on other sites I've sometimes seen a question I considered not very good, but I could determine what the asker wanted and it was easy for me to toss off an answer to help him out, so I did. $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Oct 27 '14 at 14:53
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    $\begingroup$ I should add that if you can improve a question so that it would merit the vote, and you don't think the OP would object to your edit, you do a real community service by making that edit -- we get a better question and the OP gets an opportunity to learn how to improve. $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Oct 27 '14 at 15:12
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While I do upvote most of the questions I answer (and many others as well), some questions I feel I can answer for the one asking, but I don't think the question is that great so I won't upvote it. Sometimes the question is so specific that I think it would not be real likely someone else will have the same or similar question. So it doesn't deserve more than 1 or 2 votes in total.

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I definitely agree. If I have to spend more than 1 minute writing an answer (as is the case with every answer I write) - that is, if I have to stop, think, and use logic to answer it - I'll generally upvote. If, on the other hand, I could answer the question without a second thought, it's probably easily answered with a Google search (or duckduckgo, my engine of choice).

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