I've been answering questions lately, and been giving responses as much as I can. I usually provide links to websites where the question asker can get more information, and reference where I get my information from. However, people aren't following up on their questions, and I am getting downvoted even though I am the only one that was bothered to answer the question. So, my question is, why do people downvote me instead of asking more questions in the comments - I, for one, always follow up on my questions. But theres always those people that downvote when the answer doesn't work for them, instead of replying to my post so I can try to fix there issues. It's becoming really bad, as a lot of good answers are getting voted down just because people can't be bothered to follow up.
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I've had a quick look at the two answers of yours that were downvoted. First thing: There is no need for snarky biteback when downvoted (especially hoping that "someone goes through hell and back" solving their problem - doesn't exactly fit with the spirit of the site). I agree with Bruno's comments below on that answer. As to the answer on the Edge q, my guess (and it is a guess) is that it might be to do with the sidenote of "it probably won't get funded anyway" - it may seem that way but it's not relevant to the question of "will it work for me" (the rest looked fine to me).– Jez WCommented Aug 2, 2013 at 11:16
1 Answer
From what I see your answers are downvoted because you do not supply information enough to actually fix the issue, you link to other sites without explaining why it would be a solution for the problem.
Example for comparison:
Tells the user what the problem is (his card is not supported anymore), links to the site that shows where I got the conclusion from and explains what are the next steps (even without specifying then written) to take.
Tells thee user "oh, there is much information in the interwebs, I found this site with solutions that might or not work for you, you need to have a look at them and see if it fits.
The rest of your answer downvotes are about speculative situations (ie: Ubuntu Edge) and probably would be better deleted and the question flagged as off-topic for the site since any answer will be good enough, but not 100% correct since we do not have enough information...
You should also refrain from accusing people from downvoting, votes are part of the site, if a users targets your user and starts downvoting things randomly then the system will tell us (opposite is also true), and remember 1 downvote = -2, 1 upvote = 10, if your asnwers are good the votes will balance themselves mostly without interaction and intervention, I would not worry about one downvote.
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Also, the user doing the downvote pay 1 rep for downvoting.– BraiamCommented Aug 17, 2013 at 15:05