why do people give best answer to the most pointless uninformative answers?

See?

That's EXACTLY why I don't bother with asking real questions!!!

No disrespect but if you used wiki, perhaps the questioner feels insulted that you figured they were to simple to be able to use it themselves.

I will often choose a Witty or genuine best shot answer over a wiki.

one of my questions was "what is the difference between a spade and a shovel"

It got 20 answers 19 of which told me how one was more rounded than the other.

the 20th answer was Cheryl tweedy didn't marry a shovel.

I don't even know who Cheryl tweedy is, but for me that was funny.

I know the difference, i was hoping someone would say you can get more S**t on a shovel

I like to give best answers to those that are from experience or are funny not something that is full of facts from the web. I could look that up myself. People that have opinions and speak from the heart are the ones that I would go for.

because, when you vote for the best answer tyou get 1 point and some times maybe people cant be bothered to read through the answers and vote for the one nearest to the top of the page. so that they can rush of to the next answer and get more points

Hi, I also have fallen foul of this.

What you may find is that unless there is a comment from the questioner under the best answer, then it was probably "voted" as the best answer.

Quite often, this may be the person who provided the answer voting for themselves, and no-one else voting.

Depends what mood someone was in. I've noticed that often the "best" answer is chosen by one vote. Not exactly a ringing endorsement is it. Maybe most people are just plain lazy.

because some people like answers that make them laugh over answers that are informative. Or some people, just dont care about the info, but maybe they care about the person who typed it to them. Maybe its a friend, or something. sometimes it is hard to tell, but at times its very annoying.

there's nowt like a pat on the back, some people apparently answer their own questions to get points and be betterer!

its a bit like not giving the first recieved correct answer the points and putting out to vote questions with one correct answer!

I don't always get answers I want to give ten points to! So sometimes I end up throwing away 10 points rather than awarding them, and I only do that so that I can get more points myself

Yes, there are two types of "Best Answers" - those chosen by the Asker, and those chosen by Voters. Many of the ones chosen by the "Voters" are actually probably people voting for themselves. You can actually vote for your own answer. Some people have more than one account so they can vote for their answer many times.

Not that I do this...

I don't know the question you're referring to, but I prefer to give points to people who give me their own thoughts,opinions and knowledge rather than cutting and pasteing from Wikki.