-5

Reading the answers and comments that I got on this question "Could we add a delay before being able to downvote a question?"
I changed my mind:

  • An answer needs to be upvoted or downvoted, it is fundamental

  • For a question, well :

    1. if the question is not clear enough:
      - no body or few people up vote,
      - but please do not downvote, leave comments to guide the owner of the question to improve it

    2. if the question is or became clear and interesting:
      - people will upvote, and their vote will show the real value of the question (no polluted by the downvote behaviour described in Oli's answer).

    3. If a question is downvoted, rather than editing his question, the owner of the question may create a new question (perhaps with some improvements) to reset the value of his question

My conclusion is:

  • downvoting a question because it is unclear leads to discourage new comer
  • downvoting a question because it is unclear leads to make the owner of the question create duplicated questions
  • downvoting a question because a similar question is already existing is a wrong behaviour, close or flag the question for duplicated question


So lets change the pop-up of the downvote icon:


Instead of:
<<This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear and not usefull>>

Replace by:
any proposal ?

8
  • 4
    "downvoting shall only be used to vote to get the question out of the system" No. Really, no. If it's a "bad" question, I really want to downvote it. It may be perfectly fine within the scope of the site and it may be following all guidelines, but if the user did not even use the search or follow the instructions within an error message then it's not a good question.
    – gertvdijk
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:21
  • 3
    "If a question is downvoted, rather than editing his question, the owner of the question may create a new question (perhaps with some improvement) to reset the value of his question" He can always delete his original question in case it changes a lot. This should not lead to duplicate questions. And if it does happen, we close them like any other.
    – gertvdijk
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:24
  • Your point nr.3 does not make sense to me in the scope of your question. Yes, he should be paying attention to comments. How would downvoting or not not downvoting affect that?
    – gertvdijk
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:26
  • @gertvdijk there is an ambiguity here for me, <<* if the user did not even use the search or follow the instructions within an error message then it's not a good question*>> so you downvote to make it closed. I do not known the CLOSURE process (I suppose that my reputation is too low to have access to it) but I believe that you have access to "close" button, so why downvoting to close a duplicate question, just "close"
    – Boris
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:30
  • 1
    That's what I'm saying. If the question is not in scope, I don't downvote, but close instead. You can read all about this process askubuntu.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes and here askubuntu.com/help/privileges/close-questions
    – gertvdijk
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:32
  • 1
    Oh and if you don't have reputation to cast a close vote, then flag it and comment on why you think it should be closed and leave a comment if necessary. That's what we encourage users to do as far as I've seen on chat.
    – gertvdijk
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:38
  • @gertvdijk thank you, I understand downvoting a question is not made for closing it because you have access to CLOSE. Now I have to read about the goal of downvoting a question. Because I do not get it. If it is only to ask the owner of the question to improve his question, then the comment is the perfect solution (refering to Oli's answer meta.askubuntu.com/a/7183/32413)
    – Boris
    Aug 24, 2013 at 9:41
  • @gertvdijk yes my nr.3 was confusing, so I removed it, and also remove my sentence "downvoting shall only be used to vote to get the question out of the system"
    – Boris
    Aug 24, 2013 at 11:08

1 Answer 1

-3

It seems that:

  • downvoting a question is not made to flag that the question is unclear
    => using a comment is better for that

    Let me explain why a comment is better than downvoting in this case:

    -With a comment you give guideline and educate the owner of the question.
    -Whereas after downvoting a question because it was unclear; the owner of the question improves it; but mots of the people who donwvoted will not come back to upvote.
    The evil part of this behavior is that people will not open a question with a negative rate thinking that it is a bad question. So the chances of the owner to see an answer to his problem is decreasing. (even if he improves his question) due to old downvotes.
    So he better create a duplicated question than editing his original question.

  • downvoting a question is not made to flag that the question does not show any research effort
    By "research effort" I understand that some other question have already been raised and answered,
    => so using close or flag is better for that

So the only valid part in the pop-up is question is not usefull
But it makes no sense to say that downvoting a question is just to vote for usefull question, otherwise any user will downvote when he is not interested by a question !


I still wonder why it is needed to get such downvote option for a question

And after some reading about Downvoting a question:

  • vote down privilege
  • and asking a question is a privilege
    << We believe asking questions on our site is a privilege, not a right. If, after a few fair attempts, you haven’t been able to prove that your contributions to a particular Stack Exchange make it at least … not-worse … then we reserve the right to refuse your questions. If we don’t do our part to cull the bad questions, then we risk alienating the true experts who provide what really matters: the answers!>>

I finaly propose:

<< Downvote to mark that this question is polutting AskUbuntu and that the user should potentialy get restricted rigth to not raise question >>

Which is finally pretty rude, but it appear to be the real reason for downvoting a question. So I maintain my first though: downvoting a new comer too quickly is pretty rude.
But with such clear pop-up, some downvoter might not downvote so quickly.

5
  • 2
    I still don't agree with your statements here. If a question is unclear, we cast close votes "Unclear what you're asking". The user will be able to edit his question and it will be reopened in a same way as it was closed using votes to reopen. If a question does not show research effort then it is just a "bad" question in my opinion and therefore "deserves" the downvotes. That is how all Stack Exchange sites work and I don't think your attempts to discuss this will get you anywhere - it's part of the design here on these Q&A sites.
    – gertvdijk
    Aug 24, 2013 at 11:35
  • @gertvdijk you and others downvote a question because it is unclear; the owner of the question improves it; but mots of the people who donwvoted will not come back to upvote. The evil part of this behaviour is that people will not open a question with a negative rate thinking that it is a bad question. So the owner of the question see his chances to get and answer decreasing even if he improves his question due to old downvotes, so he better create a duplicated question than editing
    – Boris
    Aug 24, 2013 at 12:32
  • Remember that whenever a question is modified it gets into the active tab, so you can upvote or retract your vote, or others could upvote the question (most questions gets 1-2 downvotes, if the user edit reverse the low quality you could be sure that it will retrieve more upvotes), also, normally when downvoting the downvoter comments, and the op do a comment to inform that he solved the questions issue, so in any case downvoters gets notified.
    – Braiam
    Aug 24, 2013 at 13:38
  • @Braiam except when downvoters does not let any comments, so the important think is not to downvote, but to leave a comment
    – Boris
    Aug 24, 2013 at 15:30
  • 2
    The important thing is to do what we feel to do. The vote is something personal, and each person has their own view of why to downvote. The comment is something optional, but I have yet to see a downvoted question without any comment.
    – Braiam
    Aug 24, 2013 at 15:46

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