This phenomena happens to me alot too. In fact I could swear that I’ve broken the fluther record for lone goose eggs in a thread where my answers were similar to others. I struggle with questions on here too, and in my past account it was a common thing for me to never get lurve for them, but yet have another user repeat my own question like a week later, and recieve several GQ votes. I had this problem on sodahead too. It’s not the lack of points that bother me, but the reasons why I suspect some get more points than others. I look at it this way though, if a user’s opinion of me is taken that far to the point where they’re not giving me lurve/raves/points because of what I’ve posted in the past, or what my opinions are than they’re being childish and I could do without them.

It is one of the weird things about Fluther. Like you, and probably everyone here, I have written answers, been one of the early people to respond, I get 0 GAs. Someone comes along three posts down, says almost exactly the same thing and perhaps not even as clearly as I did, and gets 5 GAs. Or like @Paradox25, I have been the only person in a long list of posts with 0 GAs.

Shrugs… what can you do? It is one of the idiosyncrasies of Fluther. I am sure people have watched me get GAs when they have none (for a similar answer) and gone “why?”. I feel I do okay in the GA stakes so I don’t dwell on the answers that for some reason leave people cold.

If there is a long series of answers with no GAs, then that really doesn’t bother me at all.

The thing about GAs that I dislike the most is when I write a response about that is several paragraphs long, and some other person just writes one sentance and doesn’t even spell it correctly and gets more GAs than me. (I have a specific example in mind)

I have labored over an answer for more than half an hour and gotten no GAs. Don’t take it personally.

It’s not what you say, it’s who you are, it really is that fickle/trite.
I quite literally couldn’t care less however, which is nice.

I preferred back when we didn’t have Lurve or Awards, and especially Lurve parties. I like the idea of tagging a Great Question or Great Answer, but I dislike having points associated with that.

@ucme If it’s who I am, that’s even worse in my opinion. But I can’t change that, so ‘ll have to accept it. sniff

It happens to all of us. Sometimes an answer I’m really proud of gets nothing. Sometimes the stupidest answers are hits. I’ve given up trying to explain it. I think you have to answer because you love answering, not because you’re trying to get praise from others.

Explain this one to me. Sometimes people will take the time an energy to pm me thanks. They’ll send a long pm. And still I get zero lurve for the answer. What’s that about? I think that people are sometimes so struck by an answer that they forget to lurve it.

I know that I am so into reading answers sometimes that I don’t lurve the ones I like, either. I try to remember, but I don’t always do it. So I think there’s a kind of perfect storm. A person has to both appreciate your answer and remember to lurve it, instead of moving on to the next thing right away.

I don’t take these things personally, for the most part. Sometimes I really wish someone would lurve me, but mostly I don’t pay that much attention. I just move on. And right now, in particular, lurve is hard to come by. For some reason we seem to have very few new users. I don’t know how much longer fluther is going to last. I don’t know how it can cover its expenses with so few users. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we are shut down in the not to distant future.

I’ve been reading about the subconscious influences of group identification, and it seems very pertinent to this phenomenon.

You can take a bunch of people, randomly divide them into groups, and that is literally all you need to do to cause individuals to behave preferentially toward some (those in “their group”) and discriminate against others (those not in “their group”). And that’s when there’s absolutely no rationale to how the groups are formed. This is a very robust effect that gets duplicated in study after study. Because this has unconscious roots, you’ll do it even when you deny that you do it.

Here we have semi-formal groups in the form of your “fluther”. Presumably, those are all people with whom you’ve had positive interactions at some point, so you put them in your group. And there are probably plenty of others that didn’t make it into your fluther, but whom you relate to nonetheless. o matter what you tell yourself about how you treat every answer according to its merit, you will be influenced by your own sense of your group.

Sometimes, when it seems like the lurve hasn’t been flowing, I’ll try to give out more lurve to see if I can prime the pump. It never seems to work, though.

@thorninmud But if we are choosing the groups ourselves, surely there is overlap between the reasons we associate with specific individuals and the reasons we “like” their comments. It’s difficult to be sure which is the chicken, and which the egg.

@glacial Sure, but we’re looking at instances where very similar comments get different rewards. Why are we more inclined to reward this guy than that guy for essentially the same answer? That’s where unconscious affiliations can come into play.

I should also mention that this will vary according to the context of the particular question. We all belong to several cohorts—gender, race, age, nationality, political, religious, etc.—and which of those affiliations determines one’s sense of group will depend on the nature of the discussion. In a political question, @jellyA may be in my group, while in a question about vegetarianism @jellyA may not be in my group. All that will figure into my subconscious willingness to reward @jellyA.

Good point.

I have a feeling, though, that much also depends on the reader’s patience for reading through an entire thread, and whether they prefer to read down from the top, or up a few from the bottom.

There are times when we run out of lurve points for an individual jelly, and we know that clicking GA or GQ will not advance their score. Now, the first 5 clicks are the ones that count, so if 5 jellies who have no lurve points left to give you all click GA or GQ and a sixth jelly comes along who is new and has some lurve points available for you and they click the button, it won’t count.

I’m assuming that everyone here knows lurve points are not limitless. Each of us has about 100 points in total to bestow on other jellies through either GQ or GA.

And only the first five hits on those buttons are the ones that count.

I, therefore, sometimes decline to click the buttons knowing that if I do, I might be depriving the user I’ve maxed out on of accumulating points from new users.

I don’t give it any thought whatsoever. I don’t care about points, lurve, great answers, great questions, or anything like that.

In between what @ucme states and what @thorninmud is explaining about groups and stuff, I often wonder if Fluther is actually some kind of experiment.

Every once in a while, it bugs me. But since there’s no way to determine why it happens (or doesn’t happen), all you can really do is shrug.

I feel crushed, under appreciated, and a wee bit constipated.

validate me bitches . . .

Aha! Our evil plan is working!

@Blondesjon that was awesome

@marinelife I too have labored over questions for hours, only to see them go Poof! Into thin air.

I’ve noticed in threads where everyone was answering fast and furious, GA’s are often not given, even when some of the posts are terrific. I chalk it up to people typing and not clicking on GA.

Also, no matter what I think, some people simply don’t care or don’t agree and that’s OK.

I haven’t ridden a roller coaster in 25 years, unless you count the ones at Disneyland.

How do these feel?

@filmfann Riding roller coasters make me want more. What was your point?

I try not to feel offended, especially when I’ve taken the time to actually do some real research on the question to provide the OP with an accurate answer, but sometimes you just can’t help it. It also bugs me a little that I’ve provided the OP with a clickable link in my answer and I still get nothing.

It gets really funny when a decent question is asked but folks refuse to answer based on their dislike of the asker…....you couldn’t make this stuff up.

@Hawaii_Jake I knew that you can only give 100 lurve points to each user, but I never realized that only the first 5 GA’s count. Shit! Now I feel like I’ve been keeping people I like from getting lurve. That’s sort of a weird rule I think. @augustlan Is he correct about this? Why do only the first 5 clicks count? What purpose does that serve? Why subtract impotent lurve from point garnering lurve?? Why not just count the points that are from new users that aren’t lurved out, and not count the GA’s from those who are lurved out?

@Earthgirl I’ve asked Auggie, and she thinks that it is true.

It bothers me most when I write an answer, and I know it’s the right one—this is mainly in general—and yet I get no GAs, while other people offer up suggestions (“It might be because…” etc.) and get GAs. I think “Hello, this is a genuine answer to your question here! You can stop making up theories because the question has been answered! Do I need to attach a bibliography?”

I don’t mind about the lurve, but a lot of the time I answer questions because I want to help people out, and there’s no other way of knowing if I’ve succeeded.

@PhiNotPi Thank you for asking….I’ll be watching this thread for more info.

@Earthgirl As far as I know, that is correct. It’s all part of the design of the lurve system, which has built in limits to discourage gaming the system and artificial inflation. As to the particular ‘whys’ and ‘hows’, I’m afraid I can’t help with that. The founders designed it before I ever got here.

@augustlan Oh yeah, I realize you had nothing to do with setting it up. I just asked you because I figured if anyone here knew, you would. I guess it’s not that important but I think of GA more as a positive stroke than a way of racking up points. A truly great answer would be the one that answeers the question best. But then, so much of it is subjective and the social questions are more opinion than anything else. No matter how you set it up sometimes the lurve system is going to reflect how much people like or enjoy the answer, or how much they like or enjoy the particular jelly. So then you have a really good, well thought out, well researched answer with no points and a funny one with 10 GA’s. It’s very reflective of a social versus fact based set up.

Being kind of new here, I haven’t really quite figured out the system in it’s entirety, but then that’s because I don’t place too much importance on the whole GA system, but I will say it does feel slightly satisfying when there is a “Great Answer” followed by a figure other than 0 in the box under the responses I’ve left in various threads.
I have certainly posted some responses that have received no GA whatsoever, but I doubt I’m really overly concerned about that. It’s the taking part that counts more than the getting of little non-shiny stars under your answers surely? I dunno. Each to their own eh?

@ucme Seriously? They’re like that? I recently posted a few replies in a certain question that shall not be linked to here, that had replies from a certain user (again no names mentioned) that really ticked me off with their approach (I am wording this very carefully right now) to the question that was asked, yet I’ve given GA’s to that person for answers I genuinely thought were really good in different threads. Why would people choose to be like that? That’s bad form, surely!

@lightsourcetrickster Largely due to the fact that they’re wired differently, you know…...shallow morons!

I don’t think that for the most part it isn’t the lack of lurve within itself that upsets people, but it’s the feeling that their answer isn’t appreciated, especially after working hard for it while a one liner, less serious response or a popular user gets more votes.