Why can't I vote for myself?

Question

If i truly believe my answer to be the best, then why shouldn't I vote for it? Why do I have to vote for the second best answer? Yahoo Answers allows its users to do this and it doesn't get abused as much as you think.

Answer 1

(You may do better to post this in the Website Questions and Feedback forum.) My gut answer is "because that's lame." Voting for yourself is just silly. But here's a more formal analysis:

There's already a mechanism for the original poster to state your answer is best. That makes sense, because part of the reason for giving an answer is to satisfy the person asking the question.

There's also a mechanism for conveying consensus among those who read the thread. Instead of reposting the same material 50 times, people can just click to "vote" on an answer they agree with.

There's also a mechanism for the situation where you think you have unique information to contribute to the thread that is more correct than any other already provided: you can post a response.

So it seems we have all the bases covered for providing anybody a way to help find the right information in the thread. You can either vote up existing information that you agree with, or you can post new information if you think it needs to be posted. If you asked the question (and are thus looking to gain information instead of providing it), you can tell all the other viewers which was the most valuable to you by marking it the "correct" answer.

Adding the ability to vote up your own answer doesn't enhance any of the site's existing mechanisms, though. It conflates the two mechanisms of voting other people's information and posting your own for no additional utility or benefit, and it provides the opportunity to make the voting-other-people's-posts mechanism less effective by diluting the voting pool with votes for oneself. It seems like keeping that functionality out of the mix is the best choice.