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Sometimes Q/A gets some downvotes and some users will complain about the down-voters "not having guts to say why". We all have seen that.

Now, for example, I believe that there are often good reasons to downvote, but also good reasons not to spam comment field with things that are either obvious or already stated in another comment or in policy or FAQ. But I agree that it can be frustrating.

But this suggestion is not about solving this issue.

So:

It would be nice if users were given option to Tweet/Facebook/whatever about votes, exactly as about questions.

This way, when I downvote, I could tweet why, when I upvote, I could tweet why, but not because I'm trying to help the conversation (in which case I'd definitely need to post actual comment), but just because I feel like that. And most of all, I could do that in consistent way (just think about it like committing).

And finally (I'm no PR expert, but) it couldn't do harm to SOFU outside it.

Edit: Apparently (again) I did not make myself clear. The suggestion was not meant as aimed specifically at downvoting, but at voting in general. It wasn't meant to encourage any kind of "LOL, look at this n00b" behavior which we all are happy we don't see (or at least manage to effectively sweep off) here on SO.

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    IMHO SE already has too many interactions with social networking sites, and adding another is bound to only provide distraction from the QA nature of the network.
    – M.Babcock
    Mar 14, 2012 at 20:44
  • OK, maybe I'm different. For me, Twitter is rather a thought dump than a social network. But I agree (and sometimes quite forget) that most people don't see it that way.
    – Alois Mahdal
    Mar 14, 2012 at 20:47
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    If you are going to explain the down-vote, it would be better to say it in a comment; at least the OP could learn what to avoid, the next time. Using Twitter for that sounds like screaming "Stack Exchange has this awful post" to the outside world.
    – apaderno
    Mar 14, 2012 at 21:01
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    Maybe I'm just a hopeless old fogie, but are these random musings flung into the Twitter-sphere ("I'm in Barnes and Noble looking at tats in a mag sipping my Starbucks", and "I just downvoted that n00b's question") really of any genuine interest to anyone else?
    – user102937
    Mar 14, 2012 at 21:03
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    @RobertHarvey - Twitter has its place, but when looking at its common use today... you're dead right.
    – M.Babcock
    Mar 14, 2012 at 21:05
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    So whenever there is a down vote, now we have to check twitter feeds in order to get a good explanation? And without any guarantee of an explanation actually being there? That's a lot of wasted effort with little to no gain, all for something that can already be done by posting a comment.
    – Moses
    Mar 14, 2012 at 22:08
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    @RobertHarvey Perhaps I'm a hopeless young fogie, but I share your sentiment exactly.
    – Moses
    Mar 14, 2012 at 22:10
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    Just for the record, I down voted your proposal and I resisted the urge to jump on Twitter to announce it. And I feel fine.
    – slugster
    Mar 14, 2012 at 22:28
  • If you really feel like publicly shaming a question then just hit the flag link; it'll much more quickly lead to quality improvements. If you're down-voting an answer because it is wrong, take the time to write your own answer.
    – sarnold
    Mar 14, 2012 at 22:28
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    I read your suggestion a couple of times, but I still don't see where you explain what the advantage of such a feature would be.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Mar 15, 2012 at 3:43
  • @PeterDavidCarter meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44127/…. And LOL.
    – Alois Mahdal
    May 25, 2016 at 0:36

2 Answers 2

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Questions and answers that you're downvoting are exactly the kinds of posts that I don't like to see show up on Twitter/Facebook/reddit. Besides being the kind of content that we don't want to be associated with Stack Overflow by the rest of the Internet, tweeting your downvotes smacks of the kind of "LOL, look at this n00b" elitist attitude that we generally discourage on Stack Overflow itself. I don't see why we would spread it elsewhere.

Please do tweet the posts that you find interesting, but keep constructive feedback on downvoted posts confined to the comments.

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As has been pointed out in many comments, finally the feature could (and, what my naive mind keeps forgetting, probably would) be also "abused" for simply spreading a bad word, which is something that we definitely don't want to make easier.

And in the end of the day, if there's anything that might deserve tweeting about, it's posts, i.e. questions and answers, particularly the good ones.

So from my POV the conclusion could be that the price and the risk are too high and the advantage is... ...at least arguable.

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