Should we be concerned with prolific downvoters?

Question

I've recently come across a few questions with downvotes that seemed a bit harsh; I accept everyone has a different view and it's fine to accommodate differences of opinion in a community.

I got the impression that one user in particular might be regularly downvoting because they put often derisory comments on a lot of those posts with a negative score. I checked their profile out of interest - here it is:

I'd be interested in the community's view on that ... ignore it as it'll all balance out, all of those 2855 downvotes are only one down for each question / answer? It does seem a bit of an outlier compared with other users, and to me isn't really in the spirit of what I feel AU is about - certainly not very encouraging to other users!

I'm not sure there's much of a solution to this kind of behaviour even if it's felt to be something that isn't good for the site (and maybe others don't share my view and the variation in behaviour is a good thing). I guess the alternative of censoring people who downvote too often doesn't appeal to me either. Maybe an automated alert to a user if they are downvoting more than upvoting, or something like that to get them to think before continuing?

Thanks all!

Answer 1

You may very well be right about this specific user, but if I can just put in my two pennies worth, I think concluding only from the raw number(s) is a bit risky.

If you go and check my profile right now, you'll find out that I have cast 3,261 upvotes and 7,369 downvotes. What you can't see is out of those 7,369 downvotes only 523 post are still surviving, rest got deleted by now. That means almost 93% of the posts downvoted by me got deleted eventually. Downvoting is an important moderation task IMO.

Answer 2

We can't say for sure what this person is doing but that sort of ratio isn't unusual for somebody who spends a lot of their time reviewing. There are a few review queues that expose you to posts that have already been flagged in some way as being bad and they're likely to attract more votes down, for closure and for deletion than the main question queue might.

You might expect more balance but not downvoting doesn't automatically mean it deserves an upvote. Consider actions like:

• Fix the post to make it acceptable. Doesn't mean it's good though.
• Post feedback to help the OP make their own post better.
• Just marking "Looks OK", because it might be just okay. Not every post is a star.

And some people save upvotes for genuinely interesting posts which are comparatively rare, especially in certain review queues.

Obviously people can take this too far too. If you think it goes outside the standard curve, said, flag the user and the mods can attempt to intervene if they think it's an actual problem.

Answer 3

I don't know about this specific user, but in general, yes:

We should be thankful for users who spend time downvoting.

If anything, we should have an alert for people who upvote far more often than they downvote. There is no shortage of well-meaning but confused folks who upvote objectively poor posts out of sympathy (Oooh, somebody downvoted this new user's post, how dare they be so heartless! Oh, this rant gave me a laugh, let's upvote it!). Something needs to be done about these users because they make it difficult to clean up the site. Thankfully we have users who also take the time to downvote regularly.

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If you have an issue about one specific user's actions, raise a custom moderator flag on one of their posts describing the issue in as much detail as you can.

Answer 4

Thank you to all the contributors - it's been a great education for me and good to see the indepth discussion. I absolutely love the variety of the answers all of which are intelligent and eloquent.

My view has changed significantly as a result of this - I genuinely asked the original question as I thought the voting pattern was rogue and not good for the site.

I've now got a lot more respect for the downvoters! I'm grateful for that perspective.

I think my final position is that I will continue to be more of an upvoter than a downvoter - I think as c.s.cameron says, upvotes probably carry enough information for the site. Posts that are just bad can be flagged (and I do that in preference to downvoting) but I do see the role for downvotes. I also think I am probably a bit of a trigger-happy upvoter and my position has moved significantly on that too.

The main issue for me about downvotes is that it is deeply discouraging to the recipient - it's in red (not green), it drops your reputation, everything about it is (literally) negative - and I'd hate to discourage people at the earliest stages of their journey in Linux or the site. Of course we shouldn't reward poor Qs or As on the site, so I will pause before upvoting mediocre posts - in all honesty I'm guilty of that previously (though I've never upvoted a poor post to counter what I think is an unfair downvote) - but I still think better to post a comment encouraging an edit rather than just downvoting. But I do accept muru's comment that my excessive upvoting is probably as bad as any excessive downvoting - so thank you again. I do like the idea of leaving a constructive comment and if the post is left as poor quality, or if the OP keeps doing things they're asked not to, then later downvoting.

In the interests of transparency, my upvotes (1059) are currently >100x my downvotes (9) ... but I've placed 330 helpful flags suggesting inappropriate posts. I'm sure that places me firmly in the outliers for upvotes to downvotes ratio and I'll be a bit more of a downvoter in future!

And as a special thank you to everyone who's answered, I've upvoted every answer here :)

Answer 5

I got the impression that one user in particular might be regularly downvoting

The system will nuke this user. Someday.

I think a lot of people downvote without ever reading the question or answer. – C.S.Cameron

The few I did are mostly more out of anger than anything else :-D Like a user constantly ignoring basic rules of AU. Excessive commenting when told not to. I often retract them too :D

Answer 6

Down votes are garbage. They are a favorite with online sadists and are not required on this site. Up votes carry enough information on their own. No site that abuses users will last long. The ability to down vote should be removed from this site. or prolific down voters should be banned.

Edit

I think my score on this answer is proof of what I say. Imagine so many downvotes for suggesting that people should be kinder.