Are the downvotes against my answers fair?

Question

I know that we all sometimes think our answer is good or acceptable when in fact it isn't. Sometimes we fool ourselves in the moment, other times we stubbornly hold to our position. I've been a contributing user on and off since March of this year. I have no doubt that people sometimes vote out of rancour for another user, or sometimes to balance out a perceived unjustified up or down vote. There's not much we can do about these, and the lower rep users are powerless as voting is anonymous, and doesn't require a comment.

I'm posting this because it's been only in the last two or three days that I've noticed an increase of downvotes on my answers, and apparently this is the only the place to raise such a concern, out in the open. I'd like to give a bit of background:

I was arguing with another user about the connotation of a word. At one point they stopped responding to me after I specifically asked them for proof of a claim they made. It seemed to me that in a moment of pique they decided to stop responding to me. OK, I understand that. But then hours later I start getting comments from this user and downvotes to my answers from them. In fairness, some of those answers might have been bad, one of them had a clear error, whatever, I'm not concerned with those initial downvotes. When I bring up the point that they're specifically targeting me to look for errors or reasons for their disapproval, they tell me that I have a "persecution thing" going. Only minutes later they tell me that they're a high rep user(a bit over double mine) and I'm a low rep user, and that they're just browsing my answers, seeing as I have a tendency to give "questionable advice", and that they'll stop when they get bored. I've given 205 answers since March and only about 7 had a negative vote count of -1 or -2 before this feud started; now there are a couple more.

I can give a short list of downvotes I find unwarranted:

• Sardony sarcasm, irony, satire, or what My answer is a synonym of the other answer, yet a user decided to downvote mine and leave the other untouched.

• A word to describe things that reduce control A single-word-request. If you read the fill-in-the-blank section to the OP's example sentence in my answer, I suggest you'll find it fits very well.

• Informal and maybe even childish word for "warranted"? Make of this one what you will, I don't know if it's bad, but it seemed a reasonable suggestion.
  

There are also others that have been downvoted by this user, but I only bring up these last three, as my other answers may well be bad answers, I don't know.

Also, it'd be typical to say this in my defence, but I'm not at all intransigent, I'm happy to accept I'm wrong. I've made friends with at least two users with whom I've had long not-so-happy disagreements with. Just yesterday I had a long exchange with a user, which wasn't friendly, where in the end I conceded their point, upvoted their answer and gave a supporting comment.

So I guess I'd like a diagnosis of whether I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. Either way it'll be a good self-discovery thing for me despite the actual result. Thanks.

Answer 1

There is absolutely no way to know who downvoted something or why—unless they say so in a comment. (Such as here, assuming that the comment is still there when checked.) Anything else is pure speculation.

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A staff developer—not a moderator—with access to the database can determine who voted for something, but will only do so in extreme and highly unusual circumstances which go well beyond just one or two routine downvotes. Even then, it won't tell them why the voting happened that way, even if inferences can be made from a pattern.

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In the answer I linked to above, the commenter said:

DV for answering a question that shows no research by the OP.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the answer itself. It could have been the most amazing answer ever written, and upvoted by hundreds of other people, but still downvoted by this one person for the same reason.

In this answer at https://meta.stackexchange.com/, in response to a similar question about downvoting, Tim Post says that "the answer was down voted because I lost my keys." He also says that some people attribute downvoting "to various phases of the moon."

All of these are possible reasons for a downvote. They're not likely, but they serve to underscore the point that downvoting (or upvoting) need not actually be rational.

In all of these cases, the downvote may not be a reflection of the content of your post at all. Or, even if it is a commentary on your post, it may simply be something along the lines of "I don't agree with that answer."

It doesn't necessarily mean that your answer isn't a good one, or that you need to do something to improve in the future, it may simply be that "it is what it is."

In each of the three answers you linked to, I see that you also received an upvote. That means that for each person who didn't like what you were saying, somebody did like what you were saying. That's worth keeping in mind.

You also have a good overall reputation. That reputation is the net result of all of the people who have thought you've been doing a good job.

There will always be people who downvote. Unless you agree that there actually is something wrong with your posts, don't take it to heart. So long as you keep getting upvotes, you can be confident in your participation.

I, myself, have answered some questions quite simplistically without (relatively speaking) putting a lot of effort into them; several of them have received a surprising number of upvotes (30+).

On the other hand, I've also literally put hours of work into some complex answers that I've been very proud of—only for them to net a low-digit or even negative score.

In my mind, I would want to see those two sets of results reversed. That only seems "fair" to me. But that's not the way things work. I've also learned not to take any of it personally—it's just the nature of an audience whose members don't all perceive things the same way that you do. Some of them will agree and some of them will disagree (for whatever reason), and the votes will reflect that.

Try not to obsess over one or two particular cases but focus instead on the bigger picture.

Answer 2

Here are my thoughts on some things that could be improved in the posts you linked. I believe the best response to an unwarranted down vote is to improve my answer to attract up votes from other people to offset it.

Sardony sarcasm, irony, satire, or what

While it wouldn't cause me to down vote, I don't up vote answers that aren't written in complete sentences. I think it's a good idea to give some indication of the question you're answering in case the original question gets edited.

A word to describe things that reduce control

I also don't up vote answers that are guesses? (Although I don't down vote them because of that unless there are other issues.)

Informal and maybe even childish word for "warranted"?

This answer is better in terms of complete sentences, but it is written like a guess instead of an authoritative answer. I wouldn't down vote it, but I wouldn't up vote it either.

So yes, I can see how someone could decide to down vote those answers based on the content and not necessarily because they're trying to get back at you.

One thing you can do is state your answer with more confidence. Here is how I would rewrite one of your answers to be something that might cause me to up vote it:

A word that "describe(s) that which reduces control or produces the opposite of control" is "difficulty".

It's defined in Oxford Living Dictionaries as state of being difficult or something that is difficult.

Difficult
1.Needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.
1.1 Characterized by or causing hardships or problems.
Oxford Living Dictionaries

It is a good match for "things that which have a chance of preventing the intended or desired result" because a "difficulty" makes things harder to accomplish.

Here is how it would fit into your example paragraph:

"When a users interact with software there are always difficulties. If you're designing a software tool you want to minimize difficulties to provide the user a reliable tool. But if you're making a game you need difficulty to make it exciting for the player."

As an aside, I rarely find arguing back and forth in comments to be productive. In my opinion, you should have disengaged long before it got to the "Prove it!". Accept the feedback, or accept the rejection of feedback you've provided and only go back and forth if someone is asking you to clarify (which is different from disagreeing with you). Or at least that's what I aspire to do - sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the moment. :)

Answer 3

Unfortunately, your question conflates two issues, and also assumes that one or both applies here on what appears to be insufficient evidence.

Anonymous Downvoting per se is an intrinsic and deliberate part of the site, which is not going to go away. There are many discussions and objections on this meta site (over 400 last time I checked), but the fundamental point is that everybody with sufficient rep has a right to vote, and has no duty to justify an opinion. If your post gathers more downvotes than upvotes, you should probably consider whether your point or expression of it could be improved; if it gathers a few downvotes among the upvotes, then that is a normal part of the criticism process.

Abusive downvoting is indeed a problem; if one user has downvoted a lot of your posts in one day, that is more likely to be personal than justified, and should be corrected. There is a script that checks each night for an excessive number of votes (up or down) from one account on another, and sometimes reverses such votes. If you think this has happened but has not been picked up, ping a moderator. But: firstly, it really does need to be a lot of posts; downvoting three answers in one day is not abuse even if they did all come from one source. And secondly, neither you nor the mod have any idea whether the downvotes actually did come from one source, let alone who it was; anonymity, as I said, is an important feature of Stack Exchange. If the mod investigating sees a large number of single votes on your answers over a short time, it may be worth escalating to a member of SE staff, who can pierce the veil of anonymity and check whether abusive voting has taken place (I say single votes because it is common for several users to downvote an answer in quick succession, and for an answerer who is already feeling persecuted to take this as further evidence. By definition, this is not abusive). Abuse can lead to suspension, but the reasons for any suspension are confidential; all you will learn is that (perhaps) downvotes on your posts have been reversed.

Answer 4

Are the downvotes against my answers fair?

Well, seeing as you asked... in the cases you cite, I think yes, they are.

• Sardony sarcasm, irony, satire, or what The question is unclear to me, which doesn't help, but I'm fairly sure that whatever the OP was asking, your response of "non sequitur" doesn't answer it. Yes, the sentence is a non-sequitur, but a non-sequitur has nothing to do with sardony, sarcasm, irony or satire. And yes, the other answer is pretty much as bad as yours.

• A word to describe things that reduce control I don't find your answer fits very well, at all. As a native speaker of British English, I can't reconcile the noun "difficulty" with something deliberately engineered to give a challenge.

• https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/460924/informal-and-maybe-even-childish-word-for-warranted/460943#460943 In this case, no, it didn't deserve a downvote; it seems like a reasonable answer to me. There might be better words (I'd have used the verb "to deserve" myself), but it was ok.

Personally, if I was going to give you those downvotes I'd explain why in a comment. As you can see from Jason's answer, I'm a fan of doing that.

As to the serial downvoting, I think other answers here have already covered that sufficiently.