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I opened a question on stackoverflow which eventually, after setting a bounty, got answered. Under my point of view, it was a valid question: it was about a problem I was facing related to a computation process/operation, I was including my source code and requesting aid to understand a problem I was facing. Anyway, the question got downvoted down to -2.

I understand the vote as an "interesting for the community" index, and I like to contribute to my best. So, having a downvoted question is something I dislike a bit, as you can imagine.

To improve my future questions, I would like to understand what I did wrong. I would apply to the downvoter's good will to understand it, but I cannot find anywhere who they were, so I cannot ask them directly.

Would you please take a look at my question in stackoverflow and speculate about the possible reasons for the downvote received?

The question is this: Hex grid map with PyQt4

Thanks!

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    your first question is primarily opinion based and the second one partially too. You have shown no research in terms of why the hexagons dont share sides. The bounty probably has prevented(protected) your question from being closed. To improve: narrow your specific problem and show only relevant code.
    – user221081
    Sep 25, 2013 at 8:32
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    The reason for downvotes is there on the tooltip of the downvote button itself :"This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful". Therefore if a question is downvoted then that is the reason for this occurring.
    – JonW
    Sep 25, 2013 at 8:36
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    In all fairness constructively asking for criticism and in exactly what way it "does not show research effort, is unclear....." isnt a bad thing
    – Richard Tingle
    Sep 25, 2013 at 8:39
  • @RichardTingle Yes, that's why I've not downvoted this question itself. My point is more that, if you get downvotes and no explanation why then there is always the downvote tooltip text reason as something to go by as to why a post is downvoted.
    – JonW
    Sep 25, 2013 at 8:45
  • @mehow, understood, it's better to ask smaller and more concise questions than so a wide and open one. Good point here. The point is that it was very clear and closed-question on my mind when I wrote it. Even it took me quite some time!
    – victor
    Sep 25, 2013 at 10:13
  • @JonW, you are right, I did not check the tooltip. Point taken. Although I don't know how reading my question (and the comments I added before anyone else) will lead anyone think about I did not research or I did not try myself in the first place. For future questions I will supply links of what I've found so far making sure it's clearly shown I did a thoroughly effort before going to the community.
    – victor
    Sep 25, 2013 at 10:19
  • All, thanks for your comments. I get the picture now about what went wrong and got some good hints for the future. I know you said nothing it's not already in the faqs or already said in other questions here. It's only I was not able to recognize it reading my question. I needed a vision from the outside. In short, the conclusion is so trivial it even hurts: if you get downvoted, you did something wrong; check the faqs again and learn.
    – victor
    Sep 25, 2013 at 10:23
  • Sadly it's not so straight forward really. As downvotes are free to give on questions then people will downvote for whatever reason they decide at that moment in time. Provided it's only the odd downvote here and there then it's best not to worry too much about it. If a post gets downvoted quite a lot though then that's when you'd need to do something about it. But usually in those situations someone would have left a comment. It's very rare for a question to get loads of downvotes and no comments explaining why (except for 'givemetehcodez' ones, or blatant spam)
    – JonW
    Sep 25, 2013 at 10:53
  • Since I opened this question, my original question in SO has a downvote and an upvote. This hints to the fact that voting, regardless the direction, it's quite subjective on the reader and not so straight forward (as stated just above by @JonW). So, a few downvotes or a few upvotes are not representative about the useness of your contribution. Studying statistics from the site can give an idea of the amount of points needed to reach a conclusion. I do not have this data, so I have to randomly choose a limit. Let's say 10 points?
    – victor
    Sep 25, 2013 at 15:28

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