24
votes
Accepted
What is your consideration when downvoting, what are your criteria?
Yeah, we do care about our posts. We do not take it lightly when we receive a downvote. We try to make the post better.
In the best case we have an explanation in a comment to help us what could be ...
- 141k
19
votes
Accepted
Are we being too generous to (incorrect) answers?
Yeah some things look right (so attract votes for effort) but are technically incorrect. It happens to anybody who answers enough on the site.
There are things you can do that are genuinely useful:
...
OliMod
- 290k
18
votes
Downvotes for answering own questions?
What Zanna said is 100% correct and self answers are encouraged but the down votes have nothing to do with self answers, as the questions were voted up.
Let's look at your answers
Dell Inspiron does ...
- 18.3k
18
votes
Downvotes for answering own questions?
Thanks for posting the solutions you found to your own problems. This is a great thing to do and the site has some ways of encouraging it - for example, this little message next to the checkbox to ...
ZannaMod
- 69.4k
16
votes
Should we be concerned with prolific downvoters?
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 ...
- 67.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Why do I not lose reputation when downvoting a question?
Because, reiterating Oli's words, there's no need to prevent users from "gaming the system by downvoting other question", as there's no point in downvoting other questions to your advantage, unless ...
- 35.6k
15
votes
Why is there a badge for down voting?
Why shouldn't there be? There are badges for all other major moderation tasks (flagging, editing, upvoting, deleting, reviewing), why should downvoting be exempt? Whatever you may think of it, ...
- 194k
14
votes
Accepted
Max number of downvotes
There is effectively no hard limit, but it's probably not useful to have one.
The system does not attempt to impose any particular limit on how low a post's score can go. It probably cannot go lower ...
- 117k
12
votes
Accepted
Is it a good idea to downvote answers by new users?
Typically, I prefer using comments as well. Voting up/down sort of sends the wrong message to new users, even though as Zanna explained it is not intended to be a form of punishment/reward, but people ...
- 104k
11
votes
Why is there a badge for down voting?
Agree 100% with @muru. The only thing I'ld add is that downvoting is arguably even MORE important than upvoting in the answer sorting process. There's also a badge for retracting a negatively ...
- 29.3k
11
votes
Is it a good idea to downvote answers by new users?
Voting is really important on Stack Exchange sites and its purpose is often misunderstood. The purpose of voting is not
to reward users with unicorn dollars1
to punish users by taking their unicorn ...
ZannaMod
- 69.4k
11
votes
Should we be concerned with prolific downvoters?
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 ...
OliMod
- 290k
10
votes
Is it ok to announce downvoting in a comment which requests clarification if the user comments instead of editing?
Yes, it is fine to comment before you downvote, even have a full conversation before you make up your mind.
I will often leave a comment suggesting fixes before casting a vote, it gives to OP chance ...
- 18.3k
9
votes
Accepted
When exactly does a downvote cost 1 reputaion?
Downvotes as a result of "spam" or "rude/abusive" flags being cast and therefore automatically done don't cost you rep.
Downvotes on questions cost nothing.
Any answer downvote you do should cost ...
Thomas WardMod
- 72.7k
9
votes
Accepted
Should an answer be downvoted if it is outdated and at the top of the page
Here's my two cents on this. I'm going to talk in very general terms, because the question applies not just to one you linked, but to many other out there. And remember, this is just my personal ...
- 104k
9
votes
Should we be concerned with prolific downvoters?
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 ...
- 194k
8
votes
Accepted
Was I wrong to down vote this answer?
As always: this is MY opinion.
The method posted by ATR could have been my answer.
chaining commands with && is all fine but it becomes rather annoying to read.
putting commands in a text ...
- 295k
8
votes
Accepted
Why am I getting +1 points?
...temporary loss of 1 rep point will be given back to you in case the answer is deleted.
Regain of reputation from downvoted and deleted answers - update FAQ
- 2,081
8
votes
What do you call it when four good answers are down-voted in the same question?
The term I would use for such behaviour is voting (i.e. there's nothing special about it).
Voting imho is a subset of moderation.
The only restriction on voting is that it must not be personal, i.e. ...
ZannaMod
- 69.4k
7
votes
Should an answer be downvoted if it is outdated and at the top of the page
No, that's very rude in my opinion. I think there are better alternatives.
The answer needs additional details
If the original answer is correct as it is at the time of posting, but now requires ...
- 67.3k
7
votes
Bullying as a strategy to force close a question
I'm not sure I should be answering this question, but here goes.
I can't comment on why other people downvote, but I sometimes do downvote questions as well as vote to close them if they are unclear.
...
ZannaMod
- 69.4k
7
votes
Why is this question about the solar eclipse so heavily downvoted?
After carefully reviewing the question at hand, I have come to the following conclusions:
The question is wholly useless.
It's not going to help anyone by any sense of the word. It's a humorous ...
- 33.8k
7
votes
Was I wrong to down vote this answer?
First of all, the question and answer are both irrelevant. You acted way out of line, were very rude and very aggressive. Here are some of the comments you left (emphasis mine):
The difference her ...
- 98.5k
7
votes
feature request : Reasons for down-votes
Because these conversations are a good thing to have? This is why I don't comment:
My pronouns are He / Him
- 32.4k
7
votes
Isn't it weird that you type upgrades and get updates?
The definitions of both update and upgrade come from Debian, not Ubuntu. If you want those terms changed, you must convince the Debian community (not us).
If Debian changed the definitions tomorrow, ...
- 58.7k
7
votes
Should we be concerned with prolific downvoters?
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.
...
- 2,177
6
votes
Accepted
Why can you not downvote comments?
See extensive discussion on Meta SE. Quoting the Jon Skeet:
If a comment is wrong, respond to it with another comment. That provides a lot more information than a downvote which could mean anything....
- 194k
6
votes
Accepted
feature request : Reasons for down-votes
This has been asked many, many, many times before.
This is very unlikely to ever change as the Stack Exchange network is built in the USA: the programmers, designers and owners of the SE network ...
- 34.4k
6
votes
Downvotes for answering own questions?
I want to add a bit to the two already existing excellent answers. if you solved a problem by using some guaranteed-to-solve methods (such as re-installing Ubuntu, removing it etc), then my advice ...
- 75.9k
6
votes
What to do when posts are voted down for no reason?
First I'll try to answer the general question. Scroll down for my thoughts on the specific post.
If you know there is no reason at all for the downvotes, then the answer is to do nothing. Downvotes ...
- 117k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible