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Don't found a possible name yet, but I think a badge for downvoting would be a great idea.

WAIT! Don't click downvote already, it's not about "normal" downvoting, it's ment to receive after you've done a moderation-downvote.

Someone asked a question, and someone answered this with a worse solution or not an solution at all. Then, we downvote to let them know it's not the right answer for this question. This is a great feature of Stackoverflow, but I see many answers with wrong content which are not downvoted at all.

To stimulate downvoting answers that really needed a downvote here's my Bade idea:

You're the first to downvote and the answer/question reaches a score of -10 after that for at least X (25 or maybe 50?) times you'll be rewarded with the "Helpful downvote" badge.

I'm still looking for a good name, but I think this will be a great addition to the badges as I find it really helpful to downvote wrong answers given in a question. Starters of a language should be pointed to the right answer and the downvotes are an easy tell for them to try out another answer given in the thread.

I just found this thread: New Badge Idea: Willing to Sacrifice

It's a great name "Willing to sacrifice", and combining that idea with mine would create a great badge.

  • First to downvote a question which will reach a score of -10 at least X (25, 50 or maybe even 100) times and left a comment

What do you think?

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12
  • 8
    My concern is that people start downvoting answers hoping to get the badge. Some might even use different accounts to bring as post down to -10.
    – juergen d
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:55
  • I understand your concern @juergend, but the 9 other downvoters will only downvote because of the bad answer, they won't get the badge for it.. So IMHO it won't..
    – Joran Den Houting
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:56
  • 5
    What makes the first downvote more special than the others? IMO there's no lack of downvoting on SO, no need for a badge. Like @juergend says, there's a significant chance of abuse.
    – Stijn
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:57
  • Answers get rarely downvoted to -10, and I don't see why they should be. Only obviously bad answers get downvoted that far, and those are not the answers where we need to encourage downvotes. The interesting downvotes are on answers which look fine at first glance, but are nevertheless wrong (sometimes even dangerously wrong). But those generally end up with a positive total.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:57
  • @Stijn it's like being the first pointing out to a duplicated post by flagging, they receive extra rep. It's all about being focused when reading answers.
    – Joran Den Houting
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:58
  • I don't recall ever receiving rep for flagging...
    – Stijn
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:59
  • except being the first to closevote as duplicate brings no rep
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 12:59
  • @JanDvorak That'd actually be an interesting suggestion. Digging out a duplicate is often quite a bit of effort with little reward compared to simply answering the duplicate.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 13:02
  • 3
    This is down to -10, who won the badge?
    – PeterJ
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 13:06
  • 1
    I don't think it's the point of downvoting to get the answer to -25 score. The point of downvoting should be to remove bad answers. So maybe the badge for downvoting the answers, that were deleted?
    – Cjxcz Odjcayrwl
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 13:19
  • I am all for encouraging down voting when appropriate, but given history, I think this would just create way too much drama, and 'false' down votes.
    – Andrew Barber Mod
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 14:03
  • @AndrewBarber: and I'd argue that "post is already at -9" is usually a good indication that further down voting isn't really all that appropriate; at that point the content's probably going to be voted for deletion soon and people are just wasting their rep downvoting it further.
    – Wooble
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 15:48

2 Answers 2

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7

I disagree with this idea.

Someone asked a question, and someone answered this with a worse solution or not an solution at all.

If someone asks a very bad question, close it with the appropriate reason and (optionally) downvote it, depending on how bad it is. If someone posts a very bad answer, downvote it and explain the reason in the comments section and (optionally) flag it for the appropriate reason.

You're the first to downvote and the answer/question reaches a score of -10 after that for at least X (25 or maybe 50?) times you'll be rewarded with the "Helpful downvote" badge.

I don't think we need to encourage downvotes specifically. People already downvote bad questions and answers. Giving away badges for downvoting would encourage people to create fake accounts just for the purposes of downvoting and this could be a big issue later on. Also, I personally think there's no need to downvote an answer to -10 or above. If the post is so bad, it shouldn't exist on the site -- it should be deleted / flagged for moderator attention instead.

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6

The problems I see are:

  • more people whining about being downvoted and now have an excuse: someone wanted to get the badge
  • The first downvoter gets the badge -> that leads to the fastest downvoter in the west problem
  • people start downvoting answers hoping to get the badge. Some might even use different accounts to bring as post down to -10.
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