user12909: A comment by Rover Eye which can be found here got me thinking.

I'll have to agree with @canadianer on this one. Bio SE has a bit of a lower voting and acceptance rate, in the SE ecosystem. –  Rover Eye 

Why is that the users of Bio do not vote often considering SE has the saying vote early, vote often?
I would like to point out bobthejoe's answer since I don't think much has changed when they posted it in 2012 and now it is 2015.

I think that we should revisit this voting question. At the moment, I think that votes are coming in slowly and infrequently.

I did some superficial digging. I looked at the voting of patterns of top users by reputation since these user tend to answer a lot of question so they spend a bit of time going through more question then say me. What I found was that many of the top users don't vote nearly that much for the amount of time they spend on the site and time they have been a member. Also, in 3+ years only 12 people have acquired the electorate badge. To me, this seems pretty pitiful.
Since not every vote has to be up, vote down if they post is mediocre or garbage. The point is we need more voting especially from the leadership (mods and high rep users) since they are the most prolific on the site. User we look to see what you guys/girls are doing and think that is community. So if the majority of this group is going to be stingy with their votes, I am not surprised new user don't take this stance too. Hell who wants to up vote others when their hard work isn't appreciated?
Do many of you think the questions and answers here are subpar, bad, etc.? If so, help improve them since moderation is by the community--make edits, comments, provide your own answer, but let's get to where people want to up vote since there must be a reason they don't. If formatting and quality and problems isn't the main problem, then what is holding you all back?

user1578: I see myself as somebody of the "rank and file" of the users on this site. I come along now and then, have a handful of questions (and even answers), and I'm ranked at #108 for all time (which actually surprised me, I expected to rank lower). I don't know if I'm representative for my demographic, but I have the suspicion that many others are in a similar situation. 
To put it short: I know very little about biology. I come in now and then, to ask about something I've had on my mind. Or when I see a hot question. Or when I get a reply or comment to an old post of mine. I may browse a bit aside from the one question which attracted me. But as a non-biologist, I don't have an opinion on most of the other posts. See for example Medium for Pseudomonas?, a question currently on the front page. I've never in my life tended a bacterial culture (although I've created the one or other colony in my fridge). I have no idea whether the one existing answer is correct. I have no idea whether it addresses the OP's question well enough. I don't even know if the question is interesting for biologists or not; it is not interesting for me, but this is not cause for downvote. 
So, I don't have interest in many of the questions and answers here. Even when I find a question interesting, I cannot judge the answer. 
Compare this to sites with very high voting numbers. One example would be English, where most users use English everyday, and feel competent to judge whether a word fits the request. (I agree that other types of questions are hard to judge, but the site has a high proportion of easy question). Another one is TeX, where each answer is easily verified. Also, my guess would be that a TeX specialist will be able to judge many TeX solutions just by looking at them. But here, where the small amount of users which gives the most votes are biologists specializing in an area, most of the answers are not obviously correct or incorrect to them without further research. A biologist specializing in botanics cannot judge an answer on the mutations common in pilocytic astrocytoma without tons of research. 
So I think that it is a combination of a very wide field, a large proportion of lay users, questions which require very specialized knowledge to answer, and low verifiability of answers. It simply makes a very different voting environment than other sites of the network, so comparisons are not very meaningful. 

user9943: Thanks for bringing this interesting discussion up. 
A gross rule of thumb could be: 'give what you get', or 'share what you receive'. 
Without saying that I am on the right track, nor saying that others are, or are not, I do wish to share that in my case this actually works out pretty well: 
I voted 1300 times, including some ~1200 upvotes. Approx 50% went to questions (600 * 5 = 3000 rep) and the rest to answers (600 * 10 = 6000 rep). The total sums up to 9k, which approximates my own rep of 8.4k (Taking the downvotes into account it's pretty much spot on: 100*-2 = -200).
Note that I don't live by this rule and that this is the first time I did an in-depth analysis of my rep after having read this question by dustin. However, I have been keeping rough track of the received rep and what I gave away as a guiding principle. A rough analysis of input and output like this may give users an approximation of their relative received rep versus the rep they have given away.      

12909: <p>A comment by <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8105/rover-eye">Rover Eye</a> which can be found <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3029/hello-graduation-goodbye-moderator-privileges#comment3122_3029">here</a> got me thinking.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>I'll have to agree with @canadianer on this one. Bio SE has a bit of a lower voting and acceptance rate, in the SE ecosystem. –  Rover Eye </p>
</blockquote>

<p>Why is that the users of Bio do not vote often considering SE has the saying <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22/vote-early-vote-often">vote early, vote often</a>?</p>

<p>I would like to point out <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/333/3340">bobthejoe's answer</a> since I don't think much has changed when they posted it in 2012 and now it is 2015.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>I think that we should revisit this voting question. At the moment, I think that votes are coming in slowly and infrequently.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I did some superficial digging. I looked at the voting of patterns of top users by reputation since these user tend to answer a lot of question so they spend a bit of time going through more question then say me. What I found was that many of the top users don't vote nearly that much for the amount of time they spend on the site and time they have been a member. <strong>Also, in 3+ years only 12 people have acquired the <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/badges/44/electorate">electorate</a> badge. To me, this seems pretty pitiful.</strong></p>

<p>Since not every vote has to be up, vote down if they post is mediocre or garbage. The point is we need more voting especially from the leadership (mods and high rep users) since they are the most prolific on the site. User we look to see what you guys/girls are doing and think that is community. So if the majority of this group is going to be stingy with their votes, I am not surprised new user don't take this stance too. Hell who wants to up vote others when their hard work isn't appreciated?</p>

<p>Do many of you think the questions and answers here are subpar, bad, etc.? If so, help improve them since moderation is by the community--make edits, comments, provide your own answer, but let's get to where people want to up vote since there must be a reason they don't. If formatting and quality and problems isn't the main problem, then what is holding you all back?</p>
 1578: <p>I see myself as somebody of the "rank and file" of the users on this site. I come along now and then, have a handful of questions (and even answers), and I'm ranked at #108 for all time (which actually surprised me, I expected to rank lower). I don't know if I'm representative for my demographic, but I have the suspicion that many others are in a similar situation. </p>

<p>To put it short: I know very little about biology. I come in now and then, to ask about something I've had on my mind. Or when I see a hot question. Or when I get a reply or comment to an old post of mine. I may browse a bit aside from the one question which attracted me. But <strong>as a non-biologist, I don't have an opinion on most of the other posts</strong>. See for example <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/26171/medium-for-pseudomonas">Medium for Pseudomonas?</a>, a question currently on the front page. I've never in my life tended a bacterial culture (although I've created the one or other colony in my fridge). I have no idea whether the one existing answer is correct. I have no idea whether it addresses the OP's question well enough. I don't even know if the question is interesting for biologists or not; it is not interesting for me, but this is not cause for downvote. </p>

<p>So, I don't have interest in many of the questions and answers here. Even when I find a question interesting, I cannot judge the answer. </p>

<p>Compare this to sites with very high voting numbers. One example would be English, where most users use English everyday, and feel competent to judge whether a word fits the request. (I agree that other types of questions are hard to judge, but the site has a high proportion of easy question). Another one is TeX, where each answer is easily verified. Also, my guess would be that a TeX specialist will be able to judge many TeX solutions just by looking at them. But here, where the small amount of users which gives the most votes are biologists specializing in an area, most of the answers are not obviously correct or incorrect to them without further research. A biologist specializing in botanics cannot judge an answer on the mutations common in pilocytic astrocytoma without tons of research. </p>

<p>So I think that it is a combination of a very wide field, a large proportion of lay users, questions which require very specialized knowledge to answer, and low verifiability of answers. It simply makes a very different voting environment than other sites of the network, so comparisons are not very meaningful. </p>
 9943: <p>Thanks for bringing this interesting discussion up. </p>

<p>A gross rule of thumb <strong><em>could</em></strong> be: '<strong>give what you get</strong>', or 'share what you receive'. </p>

<p>Without saying that I am on the right track, nor saying that others are, or are not, I do wish to share that in my case this actually works out pretty well: </p>

<p>I voted 1300 times, including some ~1200 upvotes. Approx 50% went to questions (600 * 5 = 3000 rep) and the rest to answers (600 * 10 = 6000 rep). The total sums up to 9k, which approximates my own rep of 8.4k (Taking the downvotes into account it's pretty much spot on: 100*-2 = -200).</p>

<p>Note that I don't live by this rule and that this is the first time I did an in-depth analysis of my rep after having read this question by dustin. However, I have been keeping rough track of the received rep and what I gave away as a guiding principle. A rough <strong>analysis of input and output like this may give users an approximation of their relative received rep versus the rep they have given away</strong>.      </p>
