There are some questions that are not deserving a downvote considering the circumstances, such as when the OP is obviously not accustomed to using the the site and thinks that it is pretty much a forum. In such cases, closing the question with a comment is the better solution in my opinion. An example: http://askubuntu.com/questions/174062/ubuntu-x64-on-dell-xps-15 ![Question screenshot][1] Clearly, the OP has only 1 rep, yet someone took it upon themselves to downvote a question that was clearly not deserving a downvote (it wasn't the best of questions but the OP or anyone else could easily get that impression). --- Thoughts? Am I thinking correctly on this or am I wrong? I'd like to get some opinions and discussion on how we should handle such questions. [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/O8eRH.png