Are we making Ask Ubuntu to uninviting to new users

Question

Whilst down-voting is encouraged for sloppy, no effort, questions. Or answers that are bad or clearly incorrect. I have noticed a growing trend of down votes on first question/posts in the review section. Said down-votes never have any comments as to how to improve,or whats expected when asking questions or why it was down-voted. I have often been left wondering why the question was down-voted myself . A simple comment on how to improve the question, without down-voting, would probably be better served for someone posting for the first time at Ask Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is encouraging folk to come to Ask Ubuntu for Ubuntu help. Many of those directed here have no idea how SE sites work and just need a quick answer. I find the over use of down-voting, without leaving an explanation in the comments rather discouraging and uninviting to new users posting for the first time on a SE site.

Are we making Ask Ubuntu to uninviting to first time posters ?

Answer 1

We get, on average, 200 questions a day. There are simply not enough active users to review, vote and comment on every single question.

This is an extremely high volume site:

• We have the 5th most questions of any site in the Stack Exchange network.

• We are 3rd in line for the most traffic.

• And 3rd for most questions per day.

If question askers don't take the time to read the help guide that's a risk they take. We simply can't personally tutor every new user who doesn't follow the rules. Trust me, I've tried.

Downvoting plays a very important role in the maintenance of the site. Filtering questions, invoking the question ban, and helping to detect spam (and get it deleted) are just a few of the important functions of voting.

tl;dr

While it is important to encourage users to add a comment when they downvote, it isn't going to happen every time. I don't consider this uninviting to new users, I jumped right in and never had a problem and I know scores of other users who did as well. If you take the time to write good questions, read the help guide and learn how the site works you won't have any trouble, and if you don't, that's why the voting system is here.

Ultimately, while the voting system may initially appear discouraging, it's actually here to make sure good questions get good answers, and it does it's job well.

^{Also, if you see a good question that has been voted down, vote it up! Good questions (and answers) should always be voted up.}

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Replies to comments:

If a community driven site can't be bothered encouraging new users and instead focuses on negativity, down-voting , for what ever reason, this place can never be seen as friendly/inviting/encouraging.

Actually for users that take time to read and understand the rules we are quite friendly inviting, and encouraging. It was so when I started, and I know of lots of users who started after me that will say the same thing.

If you can be bothered to down vote you can be bothered to comment.

That's only partially true. When I started downvoting I usually left a comment explaining why. However that slowly stopped so that now I only comment if it's not obvious why I'm downvoting. This is why:

We get about 200 questions a day. Let's say 50 of those are bad questions for whatever reason. Let's go on to say that I downvote and comment on 10 (which usually doesn't happen anyway). Repeat for 7 days. Now I have 70 downvotes and 70 comments.

That's a lot of time that could be better spent helping the user on their problem, if they would have only taken time to read the rules in the first place, not to mention 150 other questions that are more deserving of help (i.e. more on-topic, with askers who actually care, shown by the fact that they took time to form a good question).

Basically, if you won't take the time to write a good, on-topic question you can't expect us to always take the time to explain why you are downvoted, when the answer is right there if you would read it.

Answer 2

Thanks, damien, for your question and the empahty speaking from it!

It is not only the ever-present threat of being downvoted right away for whatever reason without knowing why and without the chance to react, but also several other "features" that are really giving you a warm welcome. Not.

For example, as a new user you are not invited to participate by commenting or voting until someone else has upvoted you to an appropriate level. You can only fire questions and pray. Result: feels awful. Depending on the graciousness of $someone to give you a voice. Learn to feel like refugees do. Democracy is different.

But $someone can not only downvote [in reality: your question | feels like: you] to oblivion but also effectively close it as "already answered" and point you to something else which really, really does not answer your question. You don't even have a chance to explain or defend yourself. The possibility alone (and seen it on so many questions) is definitely challenging to not Ctrl-W right away.

By such measures, SE forums are firmly presenting themselves as little VR-castles under the reign of some guys that hardly do anything else. The "bosses" are indicated by a several K posting numbers under their username like kerves on colts in the wild west. They decide what's good and bad, and they have their mechanisms established, their walls in place, to defend their reign.

I know that it's not true, because you guys have not made the rules, and you give good advice and invest an admirable amount of time in doing so, but it feels like that when you are on the outside of those walls.

Alone reading a (-5) score for damien's question without being able to upvote it supports this impression. And what does it mean? Bad question, not backed up with enough information, don't want to see it bubbling up, or just abuse as voting buttons for the subject of damiens question?

And when writing this statement, I know that those newbies sharing my feelings will not be able to upvote it. And many will not dare to write an own comment on this because they fear to be downvoted right away (which I absolutely expect for this post, because of well... eh... walls... you know...). See what I mean?

Reason why I do write this anyway? I dunno. Maybe I'm old enough to just not care. Or too much time tonight, some wine, and to noisy outside to sleep ;)