Timeline for Why isn't it required to provide comments/feedback for downvotes, and why are proposals suggesting this so negatively received?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
32 events
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| Feb 8 at 17:23 | comment | added | ThisGuyCantEven | How about providing some actual empirical evidence that "downvotes are important for the health of a site"... Specifically this site... I'll wait... Literally one study or analysis that shows question quality is (IN ANY WAY) affected by it. All I see in these answers and comments is a bunch of opinions and zero data. | |
| Sep 30, 2023 at 1:15 | comment | added | Michael Freidgeim | @Fareanor, I’ve posted a feature request to make explaining reason for downvotes easier meta.stackexchange.com/questions/393416/… | |
| Sep 27, 2023 at 14:39 | comment | added | Fareanor | In the same lines, a comment does way more that just legitimate the downvoter or giving an explanation to the author/future readers. With a comment, the author, knowing what's wrong (if he's wrong) can improve his answer, or remove it if it is plain wrong, and consequently, it contributes to increase the content quality (or remove the garbage) of the platform and the trust we can have to the given answers. It's beneficial in all possible ways we can think of it. | |
| Sep 27, 2023 at 14:31 | comment | added | Fareanor | I'm not really concerned about "new-comers experience" and all that stuff. I can easily understand why a downvote on questions may not require a comment since the reasons are often obvious (no research effort, unclear, against SO guidelines/rules, etc..), but for answers I maintain it must be mandatory to provide a comment for a downvote. Because just telling "this is bad" is just plain useless, it doesn't help future readers to see if the answer is really incorrect, what is or why it is incorrect, nor if it's the downvoter that is incorrect or misunderstood it. | |
| Aug 21, 2023 at 18:49 | comment | added | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | @Andrey What is serial voting and how does it affect me? | |
| Aug 21, 2023 at 8:25 | comment | added | Andrey | @Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog, Yes, in most cases, beginners themselves disdained the point: "Read how to ask good questions correctly." And I agree that bad and really stupid questions (like: Advise books on something (this is a stupid question since the user did not even bother to check himself, but is there a similar question) I would like to dislike for no reason. But what about the pursuers ? (who didn't like your questions and answers and they are chasing you and dislike your new and old questions/answers) | |
| Jul 26, 2023 at 12:15 | comment | added | tripleee | I probably comment too much, rather than too little. But even if everyone maintained my level of commenting, there is no way we could manually respond to each and every question which deserves a downvote. There simply has to be a limit of how much hand-holding we can offer new users. | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 18:40 | comment | added | MaxRocket | These sound like reasonable things, and they are, but there is STILL a big problem here, so more needs to be done. What other ideas do you have? And maybe it's time to revisit some of the ideas that are rejected in this answer. "You'd destroy the entire system" is a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? And "we can't accommodate everyone" is a response that's far too often used as an excuse. Yes, you guys have done a lot. More needs to be done. -- Veteran user of 11 years. | |
| Dec 20, 2022 at 16:18 | comment | added | zcoop98 | @AlwaysLearning Closure is governed by very specific guidelines– if a post does not fall under a specific close reason, it should not be closed, plain and simple. Voting, both up & down, is not like this, and is intentionally designed to be much more subjective and to offer much more freedom to voters than the close vote rules do. Close votes and up/ down votes are different tools, with different rules governing them. | |
| Dec 20, 2022 at 10:20 | comment | added | AlwaysLearning | Then one should be able to close a question without specifying a reason as well. | |
| Jul 16, 2022 at 1:16 | comment | added | user1225180 | These are good reasons, but there are equally good reasons for a feature where users give feedback for their voting - either way, whether from a pre-defined list or 114 characters max. of text. As long as the reason is genuine, it will be useful for all users. Currently, voting is shrouded in mystery. No one knows anything, and people can just vote without giving a reasonable response. Currently, SE is like a slightly more regulated form of Twitter. At the end of the day, whoever owns the platform makes the rules, but we all have good reasons either for or against. Feedback = learning. | |
| May 19, 2022 at 17:47 | comment | added | Muhand Jumah | I agree with @LukeHill and many other comments. I also have asked plenty of good, high quality questions that got downvoted for absolutely no reason, some actually turned out to be bugs that helped mainteiners fix. There are definitely ways to improve this system. One method comes to mind, punish down voters. Now I know it seems harsh but what if moderators get to check down voted question? and decide whether it was justified or not, if otherwise then the downvoter will get punished. | |
| Feb 13, 2022 at 22:44 | comment | added | Luke Hill | I know this is an old question and an old answer, but I have to disagree here. Note that I am unsure how to solve the problem of bad downvotes. Documentation on how to ask a good question is made easily available for those willing to read it. This, while true, is unhelpful. I have asked plenty of good, high quality questions. I know this because other community members and I have spoken about it. Yet these questions are CONSTANTLY downvoted, for no reason at all. Its odd that on a non-opinion based site, people will downvote questions against their opinion, without saying anything. | |
| Nov 4, 2021 at 18:15 | history | edited | bad_coder | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Ease of reading edit. Slight grammar revision.
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| Nov 4, 2021 at 17:06 | history | edited | bobble | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
orthography (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/313750/use-standard-dash-formatting-in-new-code-of-conduct for the emdashes)
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| Nov 4, 2021 at 14:27 | history | edited | zcoop98 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Minor wording tweaks to better encompass general feedback (eg. a dropdown with reasons), not only comments specifically
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| Aug 5, 2021 at 9:52 | comment | added | Buck Thorn | The line of argumentation here is logically flawed. Having a vote tally is great. But that in itself does not mean commenting should not be encouraged. Anonymity and lack of context disconnects people from those we affect, often to the detriment of all. Interpreting the arguments here: votes are useful to future visitors, but comments are not? Commenting complements voting. You can and should vote and (as necessary) comment. Depends on site and post. Questions may be self-contained and few comments necessary to clarify or guide. Comments are often useful to future visitors. | |
| Dec 22, 2020 at 15:25 | comment | added | Alpha Delta | This is just lazy. Each and every one of the above "problems" can be avoided. If explanations for down votes are provided then it would prevent future mistake. Mandatory comment is probably not a good idea. But an anonymous drop-down list could work. | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 4:26 | comment | added | Alisson Reinaldo Silva | Downvoting without a reason is only useful when there are already several downvotes. The first downvote alone is useless without a reason, because future readers have no context on why it got downvoted (accidentally, trolls, someone just misunderstood the post). As soon as there are, say, at least 3~5 downvotes, then I'd agree providing no reason is not necessary, because if one person downvote alone it might mean nothing, but if there are a bunch of people downvoting, then it must mean something (you wouldn't think a group of people combined to mass downvote). | |
| Nov 14, 2020 at 2:57 | comment | added | xdhmoore |
nothing needs to be clarified. This is simply incorrect. It is not always clear why downvotes are given. One reason being that they come from people, who are not always in 100% compliance with whatever the the help documents are. Another reason is that the help documents are too long and unclear themselves. They aren't written by a single, skilled writer with a user in mind. They are the organic outgrowth of the community and thus aren't honed into clear documents.
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| Nov 9, 2020 at 19:17 | comment | added | Luuklag | and then there are cases of users going on targeted voting. For a user it is easy to spot when you are serially being voted on. Simply reporting that with a flag will oftentimes result in Community Managers diving into the database, and look up who voted on what exactly. If they find any fraudulent voting behaviour they will reverse that. | |
| Nov 9, 2020 at 19:16 | comment | added | Luuklag | @IñakiViggers (1) - While true, I don't see this as a reason to make comments mandatory. If one feels in a contributing vibe one can choose to add a comment to clarify that something is wrong with the post. (2) While true it is also a way to downvote garbage posts quickly. Posts that are so obvious garbage they're not even worthy of a comment. (3) Ok, not sure what you mean by that? (4) Yes, but why not make it easier not to be trolled, by not demanding a comment on a downvote? (5) Which is why we have moderators and staff members. Personally I don't agree with quite often, but every now [1/2] | |
| Nov 9, 2020 at 12:26 | comment | added | Iñaki Viggers | (1) Comments "alert" also future readers (not just the author) why the voted post is unfit. (2) Typing gibberish or "this is bad" evidences downvoter's lack legitimate motive and/or his inability to articulate, which weakens the purpose and effectiveness of content rating. (3) The "swarm intelligence of future viewers" is oftentimes just an euphemism for "herd effect". (4) It is up to each contributor to not be dragged into off-topic discussions by some troll. (5) The anonymity of downvoting encourages deplorable behavior which quite often goes undetected by SE programmed functionality. | |
| Oct 9, 2020 at 20:40 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 29, 2020 at 21:10 | history | edited | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 23, 2019 at 5:50 | vote | accept | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | ||
| Mar 19, 2019 at 0:13 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by CatijaStaffMod | ||
| Mar 18, 2019 at 23:02 | history | answered | Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog | CC BY-SA 4.0 |