Why only 5 points per upvoted question and 10 points per upvoted answer?

Question

Often times answerers receive more upvotes than the questioner. In addition they receive 10 points per upvote. However questioners only receive 5 points per upvote. I think that questioners should also receive the same amount of points per upvote.

Answer 1

Because “שאלת חכם חצי תשובה”; a good question is worth precisely half an answer. ☺

Answer 2

Here's the explanation of why SE switched from +10 per question upvote to +5. Basically, the idea is that high-quality answers are most important.

Here's an update on the same topic. The SE position is "questions are merely the sand that produces the pearl," and "you optimize for pearls, not sand." Read the whole post; there are some interesting insights in it.

Answer 3

This is actually one of the things that changed when we migrated to SE2.0. Here's the why given on the blog:

• While we value good questions (and asking a great question is absolutely an art), we want to explicitly encourage people to provide the best possible answers. Without people interested in providing good answers, the questions are moot. We know that answers have more intrinsic value than questions, and the reputation balance should reflect that.

• The question asker already enjoys a substantial benefit beyond reputation gain from upvotes on their question — namely, they get great answers to their question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t need as much reputation gain.

• There are a few users who ask hundreds, sometimes even thousands of questions. Over time, these users generate a fairly sizable reputation entirely through the tiny trickle of upvotes gained by these questions. In a sense, we want to discourage question asking a little bit, and make sure that people who ask questions are doing it for the right reasons and not to generate reputation.