It would be interesting to create a separate account just to see how high I could get my "avg" metric. I think I have a general idea of what causes posts to get upvoted. But that's not my goal when I write comments.
My best posts (on QM or molecular dynamics or color theory) don't get that many points but I still write them because I feel like they are informative and somebody could get a lot of use out of them. I occasionally also write semi-controversial posts that I know won't get many upvotes, but I still feel the arguments I make can be useful to others or hopefully at least spur thought.
On the other hand, submissions remain a mystery to me. My highest voted submission (466 points on old Russian photographs) nearly slid off the new page before being caught right at the end with a surge of upvotes. However, my submission on Titan (now the world's fastest supercomputer) got no interest whatsoever, which really surprised me given the demographics of this place.
My best posts (on QM or molecular dynamics or color theory) don't get that many points but I still write them because I feel like they are informative and somebody could get a lot of use out of them. I occasionally also write semi-controversial posts that I know won't get many upvotes, but I still feel the arguments I make can be useful to others or hopefully at least spur thought.
On the other hand, submissions remain a mystery to me. My highest voted submission (466 points on old Russian photographs) nearly slid off the new page before being caught right at the end with a surge of upvotes. However, my submission on Titan (now the world's fastest supercomputer) got no interest whatsoever, which really surprised me given the demographics of this place.