Why is my answer being downvoted?

Question

I've posted an answer that I think that is as valid (or more) than it's companions. It was downvoted 2 times and up voted zero times. Why is happening this?

Link: https://askubuntu.com/a/609136/387382

Update 1: Downvoted 3 times.
Update 2: I edited my code to be better yet (or that is what I think).

Answer 1

The general

Reasons a post could be downvoted include, but are not limited to:

• Somebody hates you.
• The user who downvoted always downvotes on the first Thursday of every month.
• Someone misunderstood your answer.
• Someone dislikes your avatar.
• Someone hates bash, why are you using bash?
• Someone is having a bad day
• Your answer has errors.
• You left a comment complaining about downvotes, that's a good way to get more downvotes.

Basically, downvotes can happen for any reason. Yes, they often indicate there's something wrong with your answer (more on that later) but they just as often are random events and complaining about them is pointless. Just shrug it off and move on.

Leaving comments like "Why was this downvoted" is doubly useless since the person who downvoted is not going to be notified, therefore the comment just adds noise to the site and makes you sound like a whiner. On the site I moderate, I always delete such comments.

The specific

In this particular case, your script has a few issues. Though I, personally, wouldn't have downvoted, I didn't upvote either. Some things you can improve:

1. There is no need for touch file. Printing to a file will create it if it doesn't exist.
2. You are checking for the alias's existence only in the (as far as I know, Ubuntu-only) ~/.bash_aliases. What if the alias was defined in ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_login or ~/.profile or even /etc/bash.bashrc or any of the other init files?
3. You have put all the comments on the far right of the line. This means that I can't read both the line and the comment describes it and makes me scroll. I don't like scrolling. Maybe someone dislikes it so much, they downvoted you.

Answer 2

You:

1. Removed the function because you thought it unnecessary.
2. Removed some unnecessary elifs
3. Changed the order of the conditionals

Those are the 3 downvotes, right there because:

1. The OP very probably used a function because he/she/it had his/her/its reasons
2. The code very probably has a bunch of stuff taken out to simplify the question
3. The code very probably had that logic because other stuff was going on

So, for the future, when someone asks for help with their baby, don't go radically doing plastic surgery on it! ;-) You can rewrite it completely for yourself to better understand the logic, but then you translate it back to what the other person needs...

The downvotes were not a dismissal on your coding skills, but just that 3 people saw something that was radically different from the original code, got irked and downvoted... Your code is elegant, works, is smaller, will probably run faster, ... but it's not what the OP needs!

Feel free to downvote this answer, though it comes closest to the actual reality of what happened! ;-)

Answer 3

I don't think you can do anything except leaving a comment below your answer and ask for explanations on the downvote reasons.

But probably you will not get a response as those who just vote down without leaving an explanatory comment usually don't come back to check it again later... Sorry!

Answer 4

It is just simply sad how someone sits behind his computer and does stuffs to just simply see his or her fellow drown to depression. I mean, there are rules to this forum thing and before somebody posts a question, it means that person has been facing a difficult time and has tried all he thought he knows, to solve the problem, and could not get it that is why he brings it up to to the forum, for help, obviously.

Those who have already gone through such troubles and have it resolved are now a step up to help this person but that is not an icing on a cake. You must present your answer in such a way that the fellow with the problem would read, understand and follow correctly, to resolve his bottle-necks. Now, there sits another person, who is not really willing to take his time to read through the provided answer, only to just downvote it. This is an online forum and nobody is being paid for giving answers to our fellow online users. Does anyone think that if this form of downvoting, without a reasonable cause of action, at least, somebody else would be willing to take time out of his busy schedule to help anyone with any of such problems?

Let us be reasonable, at least for a split second, before giving such votes. Any efforts are resolving another user's problem is enough to earn a reputation because it is not easy. Why are people charged and prosecuted guilty of murder at an attempted murder as actual murder in the court of law? Let us give credit due those providing answers to our problems so we can keep this forum running into unforeseeable future. There is a post about how to resolve unmet dependencies here that I followed when I was having the same problem. I followed through step by step but still never got my problem fixed. That does not mean the provided answer was wrong or bogus, it must have helped someone else but not me. I just move on to the next answer that may help solve my case.

Now, I made a post rhetorically asking if Ubuntu is at war with VLC here and that got a 2 downvotes. Obviously, the person who downvoted that has never read why I asked that question. But you know one funny aspect of the case, I was referred to read the post about how to resolve unmet dependencies, which I have already tried to no avail.

So now somebody tell me, what was it that I said or asked that was not supposed to be asked or said about the problem that I am still having? Is this voting helping any of us or someone people just don't want you to reach the same reputation as they have reached, so you can continue being under them in terms of Online Forum Reputation (OFRs). I could have started a completely different new post with this but I feel I should add it, just so people who are bent on downvoting others should have another opportunity to down another comment.

Happy down-voting!!