I am a hater because people do not understand voting patterns properly

Question

I quite often happen to be misjudged on my voting patterns that are exposed through my profile page.

I decided to withdraw my nomination for a moderator for 2 reasons:

1. after seeing other peoples achievements I came to conclusion that I am not experienced enough to be a moderator. Even though I would like to be one I wouldn't probably make a good one as of today. I wouldn't mind letting the nomination hang in there and see if I get at least one person's vote, but...

2. comments left under my nomination did not sound too encouraging. Peer pressure. Judged me based on the amount of downvotes I have made.

How many of you are actually aware of the actual vote count which is exposed through the votes tab, and not the summary page in your profile?

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Some simple math:

1385 - x = 681, makes x = 704 deleted downvotes against 681 still standing.

The deleted downvotes do not count so why is that exposed to anyone visiting your profile and misleading people?

I realize that for the current Moderators Election the flag's count and meta participation is the main factor but you can't stop people pointing things out like the negative votes ratio.

Bad questions deserve a downvote, nearly half of those that I downvoted got deleted which should be considered a good moderation action taken! I am sure if I were more active in c# and not vba and excel where bad questions do not get closed and deleted at the same rate as c# or java my downvote ratio would go down as most of the downvoted questions would be deleted anyway.

Open your eyes people don't prematurely judge people.

Answer 1

Every moderator election, someone comes along and questions the voting history of nominees. To someone unfamiliar with the site and how things operate here, at first glance a high number of downvotes would seem to indicate harsh treatment of others. That's not at all the case. In my experience, the ratio of downvotes to upvotes has absolutely no correlation with how rude or welcoming a particular user has been in their interactions with others.

Most people miss the large volume of absolutely terrible content that comes into the site on a regular basis, because of how quickly it is usually dealt with and hidden. If you're one of the people who helps clean that up (by downvoting spam, trolling, nonsense, completely off topic material, or other garbage) you're going to end up giving lots of downvotes. Also, certain tags or areas tend to attract more of this than others, so where you're active will factor into this.

I was joking with Robert Harvey the other day, because one of the first times I ran for moderator, he called me out on my downvotes. If you look at any of the current moderators, you'll see we've cast a large number of downvotes, which comes with being constantly exposed to the worst content the site has to offer.

In fact, the only point that could be drawn from any analysis of someone's overall vote counts is that if they have few or no downvotes cast they probably haven't spent any time dealing with the pure garbage that a Stack Overflow moderator regularly sees. They may not be prepared for having to handle that all day long.

I would not let these complaints drive you away as a nominee, nor should they be a major factor for potential voters. I don't know that these votes should be hidden, because it's reasonably easy to explain them away. Looking at past elections, what your peers say about you and your behavior matters far more than a handful of comments about arbitrary metrics.

I'm writing this up as an answer, in case I need to quickly refer to it as this election proceeds, or for the next one.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if you:

1. ask if you have done good withdrawing your nomination because some people were disgusted/scared/jeolous because of your downvotes count
2. ask if you are a hater because you downvote crap
3. request to hide votes on deleted posts from profile

but in all of the above, I disagree.

1. If you downvote a lot, you probably spend more time reviewing than typical user. It's a good thing for a moderator.
2. No, downvote is not a sign of hate. Upvote isn't a sign of love, too.
3. I don't see why. If your downvotes have helped to remove some crap, you should be proud of them.

Answer 3

The questions/answers are not really delete (only soft deleted), so the downvotes are actually there in the database. Logically, any deleted post can be revived, hence the downvotes are kept, and because they are kept, they are counted.

Regarding why they are shown in your profile, showing them is not misleading, the profile represents you, and you have actually made these downvotes yourself. If you think making too much downvotes ruins your image, then don't.