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I recently saw a question requesting that the answerer upvote the question if they deem it worthy.

I personally have no problem with this; I think there are a lot of very creative questions on this site, and they don't always get the votes they deserve.

Part of what makes Puzzling different from other SE sites is that the "questions"/puzzles (especially the really good ones) often require a lot of thought and effort to put together.1

The SE framework is set up to encourage quality answers more than quality questions2 (you get twice as much rep for an upvote on an answer as you do for an upvote on a question). But on Puzzling (unlike many other SE sites), the question often (not always) takes more effort than the answer does.

There have been several questions I've encountered that have been so masterfully put together, with an obvious effort and attention to detail, that I've wished I could give them several upvotes, just to indicate how much I appreciated them.

It might not be technically feasible to change the amount of rep awarded, or the number of upvotes allowed (I'm not really sure how customizable things are from one SE to another)3, but I wonder if there are other ways we can help to recognize exceptional questions?

One thing that has been done is to start a meta question with the "Best puzzles of <time period>", but meta is sparsely read, and most visitors to the site will never see those lists.
Best puzzles of 2015 Q2?
Best puzzles of 2015 Q1?
Best puzzles of 2014?

Are there other ways we can think of to help excellent questions get the recognition they deserve?

1. I'm not saying this is never true on other SE sites, but a well-thought out puzzle will generally take a lot more time and effort to put together than a straightforward question about any topic, even if the question is carefully researched and worded, and is by all counts an excellent question.
2. Don't get me wrong -- we try to encourage both!
3. And I'm not entirely sure we want to go down that rabbit hole...

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  • $\begingroup$ Related: meta.puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/2909/… $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Aug 12, 2015 at 14:07
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    $\begingroup$ haha i wonder why anyone would down-vote this post!? this site never ceases to surprise me. $\endgroup$
    – JLee
    Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 17:34
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    $\begingroup$ I'm not sure if the lack of answers means that no one has any ideas, or just that the topic is not of sufficient interest... $\endgroup$
    – GentlePurpleRain
    Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 14:57
  • $\begingroup$ @GentlePurpleRain 11 votes as of today. I would say the topic is of sufficient interest. $\endgroup$
    – ghosts_in_the_code
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 11:55
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    $\begingroup$ I have to admit - I'm one of the people who rarely upvotes questions. Why? Mostly because I never got into the habit of it, especially as 'in the early days', I found some people to be 'spamming' questions in an attempt to earn rep. Will take this into consideration in the future. $\endgroup$
    – Tim Couwelier
    Commented Oct 2, 2015 at 8:54

1 Answer 1

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One possible suggestion could be to allow bounties to be awarded to deserving questions rather than just answers.

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    $\begingroup$ I'm not sure that is doable in the SE format. $\endgroup$
    – Rohcana
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 14:46
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    $\begingroup$ @Anachor Puzzling SE itself is a slight deviation from the SE format. SE was not initially meant to be a place where you asked questions you already knew the answers to (This is still banned on sites like Math SE). So if you change the use of the site, it seems justified that you make certain changes to the system itself. (Ofcourse, this is just my opinion, you could ask as a feature request if you're interested.) $\endgroup$
    – ghosts_in_the_code
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 15:17

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