Should we acknowledge other answers with an upvote, if we learn important info from them, and use it in our answer?

Question

Each one of us may have our own criterion, as to when to up/downvote. I'm trying to see if some cases should be a common factor for all of us.

Imagine there's a question and some existing answers. You add another answer that is correct, and that it adds some key point, not yet mentioned in any pre-existing answer. That point is key in the sense that it even invalidates a big part of what the other answers were saying, at that time. Now, one of the other users sees your answer, agrees with your point, acknowledges with a comment, and corrects his answer. The correction is important both in number of edits, and in the concept behind it. My question is: taking into account that, if you hover over one answer's upvote arrow, it says "This answer is useful", shouldn't it be a common factor of all of our individual voting criteria that, in cases like this one, (at least) the person that used that important point should upvote that other answer? I think he should.

This happened to me yesterday, with this answer, which provided a key point, which was used to correct another answer, and it indeed was acknowledged with a comment, but I got no upvotes. Not that I care too much. I'm just curious to see how many people would also think we should acknowledge with a +1, in cases like this one.

Answer 1

You should give a +1 if it meets the criterion set by hovering over the arrow.

Was the answer useful?

Can we force someone to vote on that criterion, no. They get to pick themselves.

The issue you are having seems to relate heavily to our discussion of people being stingy with votes. Although the person you are complaining about is not a serious offender on that front, he is actually quite active at voting.

Answer 2

Too much attention is paid to the reputation numbers here. Remember, it's just a number on a webpage. Please don't harm the site to increase your own rep number.

If you want to improve the site, vote up every answer that is useful. Many engineering questions involve judgement and more than one answer is correct. Apply an upvote for answers which are well-explained and correct technically, even if they "compete" with yours. We're all here to help others, right?

Answer 3

'Ola. I was the one who used information from your answer to improve mine. Two things.

I regularly edit existing answers of mine (sometimes of others) when I think the edits improve the answer's quality and may be helpful for others. (Only yesterday I added a link to an older answer, which leads you to a long piece of additional information. Upon which someone replied "Man steve, you sure have to taste your own medicine." Which irritated me.)

Then the upvote, or lack thereof. You spent some time scrutinizing the details of current in the datasheet. I appreciate that. I also try to do that, though I must admit that sometimes I still miss some detail. The reason I didn't upvote is that I don't think it's a very good solution. It's original, but it's 5 times more expensive than the classic solution, my boss wouldn't appreciate it. Also if your LEDs would require more current you would need a push-pull driver instead of the more common and cheap open drain/collector drivers.
To be clear, it's not a bad answer, I wouldn't dream of downvoting it!

But I don't think you can extort votes.