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There is only a casual relationship between upvotes and answer quality in general. Glib, facile answers can garner scores of upvotes, while seriously thought-out, informed, articulate answers garner one or two — if that. Meanwhile, excellent answers accrue downvotes because they yank some invisible trigger that releases a momentary dart of malice from some ...
25
You have made a very good observation. You may recall that the last time we communicated, almost a year ago, I told you that I thought that the silent downvotes on your question were due to "overzealous enforcement of the FAQ guideline that suggests that off-topic questions should be down-voted to remove them from the front page, and that answers to off-...
25
Absolutely it can be downvoted. Even the tooltip on the downvote button mentions a lack of evidence of research as a reason to downvote. Stack Exchange has never looked kindly on gimmethecodez questions, whichever of the network’s sites they appear on.
Medica's referred you to the Help text; the supplementary question “So how much research is necessary?” ...
16
Alenanno posted even while I was typing. We have some overlapping viewpoints.
From a comment here:
To clarify: by "good", I mean "is encouraged here" (that's the gist of what upvoting is supposed to mean, yes?), and by "bad", I mean "is unacceptable behavior here" (that's what downvoting is supposed to mean, yes?). I have see several posts flipflop up ...
14
I can remember having a distinct thought yesterday, about how there seemed to be a dearth of good questions, and a rash of some very bad ones.
("Good" and "bad" are subjective, so, to save time, you can read my thoughts about "good" questions by looking at my profile; I've already written about it there.)
I don't believe this is a matter of experts vs. ...
14
Did you search the help section before asking this question? If you did, can you show us what you found, and what you're having a problem with? No? Hmmm... that means I have to do it for you, even though I'm not blessed with more time than you are.
Well, here goes... searches... Ah! Here you go.
In the help section, under How do I ask a good question?, the ...
13
The fact is the site would never work if you had to comment on a downvote. I create internal applications at my company that work sort-of-similar to SE and the ones that have less rules get used more.
It would take too long. As most users might be OK with the time, it would keep them from looking at other things on the site. So you may feel that the ...
13
I had already upvoted this question before I got to my favorite two bullets of all:
look at criticism as helpful, and assume the same about anonymous downvotes
do not take it personally
When I get an anonymous downvote, I examine my answer objectively, rather than defensively, and then I try to improve the answer. More often than not, I can guess why the ...
12
Ryan, there is no accounting for most down votes. The majority of them are not explained, and it's not uncommon for down votes to be cast for reasons other than any valid assessment of the worth of the question. Once you've been here long enough, you'll realize that some people down vote for reasons that are knowable and understandable only to themselves, ...
12
Einstein once said, if I had 60 minutes to solve a problem I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the right question to ask, and 5 minutes on the solution.
Thinking of the right question to ask requires both effort and research into trying to answer it yourself.
So the answer to your question would be "yes," and the reason behind it is that the ...
12
Here is my perspective, as more of a longtime user of this site.
In general, explanations for downvotes are not required, and so shouldn't be expected.
Downvotes are ... something that different people use differently. There are a few clear rules (don't downvote just for reasons not related to a post's content) but in general, I don't think it's useful to ...
12
Downvoters often do not explain why they have downvoted. I've gotten downvotes with no explanation on what I think are decent questions and answers (most recently an hour ago.) I think nearly everyone has. We call this downvoter the "drive-by downvoter."
I've also seen users give guidance to a new user on his/her Q or A, and seen that guidance totally ...
11
Why are there so many meta questions about how so many main questions are being downvoted or closed?
Here's my take on what happened this week:
For whatever reason, EL&U was hit with a lot of inferior questions, all in a matter of a couple of days.
Many regulars in the community, somewhat irked by a flood of poor questions, responded with a flurry of downvotes.
Many onlookers and askers, taken aback by the outbreak of downvotes, came to meta, to wonder ...
11
Downvoting without offering feedback is not a nice or effective solution to the stated problem.
Sure it is. Or rather, it's part of the solution. The problem is complex - expecting one tool or tactic to be the primary or only solution would be naive.
So you describe a situation where very knowledgeable folks find themselves faced with trivial and poorly-...
11
The central problem here is that most of your so-called “questions”:
show no research
present no theories
and expend no effort.
That situation alone merits a downvote according to the tooltip guidelines regarding downvotes. To see why, hover over the down-arrow on any question and the following descriptive text briefly appears:
This question does not ...
11
The two downvotes (so far) on the OP's submitted answer were probably from users who had not read the post carefully, they probably thought the first suggestion, peep show, was "bad", or "incorrect", or "inappropriate", or simply "wrong".
The user's answer (now self-deleted) explains very clearly why the OP asking the question might prefer not to use ...
10
The OP, @aesking, told the community:
To me “to give someone advice” is the most common variant but it sounds phrasally and unidiomatic. However, to be politically correct I think “tell some advice” is more appropriate as personally in my grammar you cannot “give X advice”, you can only give physical objects but you can tell or speak advice/words.
What ...
9
Why are there so many meta questions about how so many main questions are being downvoted or closed?
In the interest of discussing facts rather than speculation, here's some recent data on posts and votes:
As you can see, there has been a slight increase in down-voting recently, following shortly after a small jump in questions posted. This would seem to jibe with J.R.'s observation of a short burst of poor-quality questions.
9
You have a right to be here, and you have a right (it is not off topic) to post questions about Shakespeare's writing. You've gotten upvotes (including mine on occasion) and answers (including mine once).
Other people have a right to be here, and to express their (whatever). They have a clear right to express themselves with anonymous downvotes, with ...
9
Downvotes serve a very useful purpose on the Stack Exchange: they discourage answers that are weak, sloppy, incorrect, unsubstantiated, or hastily-written. This motivates many contributors to be more careful and thoughtful, to corroborate their ideas, to proofread their answers, and to strive to write something that is accurate and useful for the long-term. ...
9
If I needed these easily available results why would I ask my question on Stack Exchange?
Well, this shows me that you’re already in the the right mindset to be here. (You might be surprised how many people don’t put one modicum of effort into asking a question and don’t even search beforehand.) You should just include more of the results you found as you ...
8
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 ...
7
You said
It is a message from the community that they are doing something unwanted.
Actually no. It's the evaluation of a single user, not the community. If, at the end of the day, the balance is positive (you had 6 upvotes and 3 downvotes), there are more people that liked your question. And it's not doing about "something unwanted".
I can downvote ...
7
If posts were purely matters of opinion, or comments on controversial subjects like religion or politics, many up and down votes would require no explanation. They would simply indicate agreement or disagreement, and the reason would be obvious. Like if this was a political site and I said, "This country is doomed if the Democrats win the next election" or "....
7
I'm posting this because I'm tired of commenting on my downvotes, then getting aggressively attacked. My comment is a courtesy I no longer want to extend (but will do so with users I trust).
This is probably the most productive attitude. The more I post content that can be rated, the less faith I have in John Q. Public's ability to help me improve my ...
7
I am a high rated member of money.se and continue to struggle with the downvotes, sometimes for my own answers, more often for others' frustration. SE doesn't require a comment to downvote, and as John said, there's a 'troll' factor here as there is anyplace on the net.
Whether it be for a question or an answer, the Downvote can feel like a personal attack. ...
7
People are downvoting your questions, not Shakespeare's plays. The reasons are known only to the downvoters (though they presumably include "does not show any research effort; is unclear or not useful").
7
A downvote indicates that somebody thinks your answer 'not useful'; nothing more and nothing less. There is no intrinsic reason why there should be more upvotes than downvotes in total, let alone why anyone should be required to justify a downvote any more than an upvote. If there were any evidence that people are downvoting for bad reasons, it would be ...
7
While the intent of the question may have been to ask about mandatory commenting on casting a downvote, it actually asks a different question to which an answer might be useful.
Yes. Downvoting is open to scrutiny but only to Community Managers† and Stack Exchange staff†. There is no reputation level which allows access to voter identity.
...
7
Nobody knows why driveby downvoters vote the way they do because they leave no indication of their thinking. These people are a curse and a plague on this site because they either leave the OP no chance to improve a weak answer or they leave the impression that a strong answer is somehow lacking. This is a stark problem for a site that prides itself on ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
