What makes the "llama" question highly upvoted?

Question

I'm wondering why the llama question was getting such ridiculously high upvotes. In my opinion, there's nothing useful in it. In fact, I think it is such an absurd and ridiculous question, that I scratch my head thinking just how it is able to garner that many votes and attention, without attracting close votes earlier.

I'm not arguing about the on-topicness, but rather how it is able to bypass the community screening earlier in its life, and why it is so highly upvoted it's now in the top 10 of the questions with highest votes of all time.

Note: The question itself has been closed as "too story based" a few hours earlier before this post.

Answer 1

This site is inherently a bit opinion-based. That's because there rarely is a definite answer to a question here. If there were it would quite often be better to ask on one of the other sites of the network that are about real-life stuff. We are creating new worlds and elements of worlds.

The problem is: from time to time something is so opinion-based that it should be closed immediately, but it's funny enough that it slips right through the normal screening process of the site.

Then it hits the Hot Network Questions (HNQs). Suddenly everyone on the network can see the question, which often has a click-bait title.

Then everyone rushes over from other sites to take a look at this weird question that suddenly popped up on the right side of their normal everyday often work related questions and they want to have a quick diversion.

They see the funny question and upvote it. Because there are a lot of people on the network such a question gets a lot of upvotes.

Often the question gets closed later, because some regulars bring the topic up in the chat or on Meta. Until then thousands of people have already read the question and it got dozens of upvotes, which makes it look like it's a good fit for the site even if it's closed.

The biggest problem that can arise from this is if other people come to our site through such a question and think that's on-topic. Or try to argue that many people like it and we should therefore make questions like that on-topic.

We should close questions like that even if they are popular. They are not a good fit for the site and they make people from other sites think that questions like that are the norm on this site.

Just because a question is in the HNQs doesn't mean it's a good fit for the site. Often it's quite the opposite.

Answer 2

It does not appear anywhere in the review queue history either. Nobody flagged it.

The question is very funny and silly at the same time. The idea was ridiculous but presented very seriously. We don't see question like that everyday in my opinion.

People (myself included) are reluctant to close popular questions even if they are blatantly off topic. You think that if the question is so popular, it must have some merit.

It got a lot of views when it made its way into the Hot network questions. Everyone on the network could see the question and many are not familiar with this particular site. They don't know what's on topic, they just vote. This is just how democracy work. Good thing we can elect our own leaders to protect us from our lack of judgment.