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Possible Duplicate:
Encouraging people to explain down-votes

Sometimes there are bad questions that receive downvotes for different reasons.

The "Stackoverflow netiquette" says that, when downvoting, it's a good idea to explain the reasons in a comment, so the user can edit and improve the question.

The question is:

What is the user to do if she is receiving downvotes without any explanation? The reason of downvote can be obvious for the downvoter or the experienced users, but maybe it is not so obvious for the user who posed the question in the first place.

How can a user ask such a thing? Is there any protocol?

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  • 3
    Related to: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/….
    – Toon Krijthe
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:58
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    It's funny ask a question about downvoting without commenting and receive a lot of downvotes without any comment. lol.
    – user674887
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 14:50
  • 4
    "How to deal with downvotes without any explanation?" - Therapy. Years and years of therapy.
    – GEOCHET
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 16:00
  • 3
    Many people getting downvoted don't want to improve, but rather try to kill the messenger. That severely discourages downvoters from revealing themselves.
    – Bo Persson
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 16:24
  • Can you please express uour opinion on marking question as duplicate at the following link: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219750/…
    – Revious
    Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 19:57
  • Sometimes, an answer challenges a user's world view enough that they react against it with a downvote. This is an indication that deep down, they agree, but cannot yet openly accept. In time they may return and upvote.
    – John McFarlane
    Commented Feb 26, 2022 at 21:01
  • What about malicious downvotes that do have comments that are evidentially false? How do you handle those? And what if they call their friends and they all downvote at the same time? And then suppose they then vote to close the question, selecting a reason that is evidentially false?
    – NeilG
    Commented Jun 8 at 9:44

2 Answers 2

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If you see that a question is getting downvotes without explanations, and you happen to know what the downvotes may be about, leave a comment to point it out, e.g.

Hi, you might be receiving downvotes because your post is poorly edited. Please consider formatting it a little.

If you are the one who's post is being downvoted, there is nothing you really can do about it apart from moving on. There are, however, some things you might want to check:

  • Is your question clear and concise? Some people may downvote questions that are too hard to understand because of poor phrasing.
  • Is your question self-contained? Some people might downvote if the info given in the question is obviously not enough to answer. An example of this would be asking "whats wrong with my code?" and not posting the actual code.
  • Is your question on-topic/constructive? (Consult the FAQ if you're not sure).
  • Isn't your question offending anyone in some way (e.g. "Hey, I know you C++ programmers suck {insert some insults here} but nevertheless, answer this: ...").
  • Is your question edited well? Some people may downvote questions that have poorly formatted code/walls of text/something else like this. I personally try to edit such posts myself (and I encourage everyone else to do it too), but some people might as well silently downvote.
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  • Thank you. Maybe could be the first option, since English is not my native language.
    – user674887
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 13:16
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Deal with it and move on.

Voting is anonymous, while people are encouraged to post comments explaining their downvotes, no one is required to do so.

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    Two people upvoted this before me without even leaving a comment.
    – Denys Séguret
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:51
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    Maybe I don't explained well. The real problem is not the downvotes. The problem is how can I get an opinion of how improve a concrete question.
    – user674887
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:52
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    A suggestion : don't do like this.
    – Denys Séguret
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:53
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    @user674887 If people care to give you their opinion on how to improve your question, they will (regardless of if they downvoted or not). If they don't care, they won't, and there's nothing we can do about it.
    – yannis
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:53
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    If user have less then 2000 reputation They get this message
    – Himanshu
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 12:54
  • Deal with it and move on: very true, but downvotes can loose your privileges?
    – ElCid
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 15:39
  • @ElCid So what?
    – yannis
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 15:40
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    @YannisRizos not a great incentive to participate, if one's new?
    – ElCid
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 15:42
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    @ElCid Again, so what? You can't please everybody, people should participate on Stack Overflow because they want to help others, if downvotes scare them away, well, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.
    – yannis
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 15:43
  • @YannisRizos: I'll give it a go. "So what?" How about the possible gentrification of the average SO user? People have to behave "in the same way" if they want to participate...
    – ElCid
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 21:09
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    It should be made mandatory to leave a comment when downvoting, otherwise you shouldn't be allowed to leave a downvote.
    – Pavel Orekhov
    Commented Aug 7, 2023 at 0:58

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