Why does the first answer to a question always seem to get more "Great Answers" than the rest?

Simply because it gets read more than the others. That’s my theory, at least. That doesn’t mean they’re “slightly agreeing” with it, though. Maybe they thought it was good but didn’t compare it to the other answers, which may have been better. Still, a great answer is in the eye of the beholder many times.

But that’s not always the case. One time I had the first answer in a question and almost all the other responses had like 5 GAs except for mine. It made me want to cry in a corner…

Well I’ll go ahead and give you a Great Answer just because I don’t want to see you cry.

Laziness.

Most probably just like it – and then don’t even bother reading on, n’est ce pas?

I knew it!

If I go to answer a question and find that someone has already answered the way I would I just click “great answer” and move on. I may never go back to the question again to see what anyone else has written.

@DominicX ; Glad to know it hurts your feelings too :-)

an ideal first answer to this question would have been “first!”

I have no idea what the answer to your question is but I am smiling at the topics you used for it:
banana, antidisestablishmentarianism, high-energy particle accelerator

I mean….........banana?
lol

@DominicX : you can see the answer yourself..First answer got great answer.

@blinkErri I feel like that’s more a meta thing. Everyone was going to give the first answer great answers on this question no matter what the answer was!

@reactor5 I think I’m gonna use this “meta thing”. Okay people why do such awesome questions never get awarded Great Questions?

Waits for people to award me Great Question…

Damn it!

LOL. I know I have been on a lot of sites where the top answer was the only one that got acknowledged. I think it has something to do with people only reading the first or second answer.

It’s the same thing as those accidental psychological findings from the 50s. They were trying to optimize the hours of a factory, and each time they changed the hours the workers got more productive until on a hunch they changed the hours back to the originals and instead of getting less productive the productivity shot up again. All sorts of studies and stuff, but in the end, if you know you’re being measured it will influence your behavior.

@DominicX
There’s something to that. They call it the Primacy Effect. It is complemented by the Recency Effect. Together, they make the first and last pages of a given magazine prime advertising real estate.

I’m laughing along with scotsbloke, being anti establishment myself, I can relate.

You can only give a GA to someone who gets there before you. The first answer is seen by everyone else in the thread, but the last answer might only get seen by one other person or nobody. It’s not because we’re superficial; it’s just numbers.

@Haleth But a just gave you a GA, disproving your theory. :-)

Well, of course it’s first so the most people read it. It is also the first to bring up a concept, so other people who parrot it are less likely to get GAs (although it kills me when someone repeats my idea and they get more lurve for that answer than I do).

People with short attention spans tend to stop following the question, so they only ever see the first few questions. Later questions are more likely to be skimmed than read, especially as the thread gets longer. Also, when an argument develops, usually only the people participating read the comments, and they don’t like each others answers.

Yup. It’s a real challenge to write something compelling enough later on in a thread that it will get more than a few GAs. I usually tend to skim through answers to a question to see whether someone has already said what I want to say. When skimming, I don’t stop to provide a GA, except possibly for extraordinary answers.

I give everyone who responds to my questions a GA just for showing up, it’s just common courtesy and I think people like to know that at least 1 person has read their answer.

Because after a question has received a few answers, people lose interest in it and move on to new questions. So later answers don’t get as much “traffic.”

Does anyone else find it hilarious that after the whole conversation, the most GA’s anyone got was 3, while the first answerer still got 10?

Can anyone say irony?

-Dan