4

I think I know why we cannot see who upvotes or downvotes our question. It might lead to unfavorable confrontations were people ask other people why they voted the way they did. It might also ward people away from voting, due to the lack of anonymity. But I don't see why we cannot see who favorites our questions? Now, I don't doubt there's a good reason, I just want to know.

Surely seeing who favorites a question or yours doesn't lead to bad confrontations. Or am i wrong?

5
  • 3
    math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2739/…
    – MetaEd
    Jun 29 '18 at 16:54
  • Thanks, your link does provide a way to find out who favorited my question, albeit in a difficult way. But do you know anything about why it is this way? @MetaEd
    – A. Kvåle
    Jun 29 '18 at 17:44
  • 1
    @A.Kvåle You'll have to ask Stack Exchange staff, whose last word on that question stands at "There is no way to retrieve the same information on the site itself and that's currently by design."
    – choster
    Jun 29 '18 at 20:04
  • Why would you want to know? What would you do with that info?
    – Mitch
    Jul 1 '18 at 0:51
  • Presuming an actual deliberate design choice, Twitter has a view to see who favorited what, because it is intentionally a social media interface for knowing what people think. But for SE, it is a Q&A to establish knowledge, so authorship is public, but 'liking' (which is voting) comes under the current cultural norm of privacy. Favoriting (or really bookmarking) is even less public, it is only intended to aid an individual user's memory.
    – Mitch
    Aug 12 '21 at 18:09
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Note: Favorites have since been renamed "Bookmarks". In addition, you can now follow a post, which is different from bookmarking as it’s something that’s completely private and gives you more notifications about activity.

Favorites are completely public. At any point in time you can see what a user's favorites are by searching infavorites:#####, where the second part is their user id. (You can also use infavorites:mine as a shortcut to see your own favorites.)

There is not a way to see a list of people who favorited a certain question easily from the actual site interface. However the information is available via the Data Explorer (note that the information there is only updated once every week, on Sunday). If you know SQL, you can write your own queries there, otherwise there are several existing queries that will find the information you need, such as the following query (linked to in this main meta FAQ):

DECLARE @PostId int = ##PostId##

SELECT a.Id As [User Link], a.Reputation, b.CreationDate As DateFavorited
FROM USERS a, VOTES b WHERE b.UserId = a.Id AND b.VoteTypeId = 5 AND b.PostId = @PostId
ORDER BY b.CreationDate DESC

As for why this functionality is not available in the actual interface, I don't know. Adam Lear, in the 2012 Math Meta post linked to by MetaEd only said that this is "by design".

(In my opinion, being able to see each other's favorites is unnecessary. Personally, I don't like the idea of anyone and everyone being able to see my favorites, so I don't use the favorite feature.)

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  • I for one just bookmark the question/answer/thing on my chrome browser.
    – NVZ
    Jul 2 '18 at 9:50
  • 2
    Laurel, on Twitter (no idea about Facebook), favorites made by a person are viewable everywhere, in addition to viewing all the people favoriting a given tweet. That is way more public than what I would assume is much more innocuous favoriting here in SE. I'm not judging any choice here (I get where you're coming from), but I don't think you need to be that paranoid about SE.
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:24
  • 4
    Wait...what kinds of things are you favoriting here? Just that you're paranoid is already enough to make you suspect. Stormtroopers deployed. Please stay away from windows.
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:26
  • 2
    Sorry. Couldn't resist.
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:27
  • 2
    No, really. I can't resist. Literally. They won't unlock the door. Pills through a slot. uncontrollable sobbing
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:28
  • 2
    I'll have to remember to come back and delete all this.
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:29
  • 2
    Even deleted comments are maintained in the database with just a 'deleted' flag.
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:29
  • 2
    ... just sayin'
    – Mitch
    Jul 2 '18 at 13:30
  • Don't worry, apple/Microsoft/Google/Gmail/Facebook/Instagram/twitter/cookies know everything that there is to know about you.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jul 3 '18 at 7:40
  • You forgot to delete the comments @Mitch
    – A. Kvåle
    Jul 3 '18 at 18:29
  • @A.Kvåle Thanks for the reminder. I'm on it.
    – Mitch
    Aug 10 '21 at 2:46
  • @A.Kvåle I may be a bit slow though.
    – Mitch
    Aug 10 '21 at 12:32
  • @Mitch Waiting-until-a-black-hole-deletes-every-piece-of-information-related-to-the existence-of-the-comments-slow?
    – A. Kvåle
    Aug 10 '21 at 18:52

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