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I want to search for new downvoted questions to improve or flag them.

I tried in the searchbar: votes:-1 is:question

but votes:XX only works with positive numbers. I can't query for downvoted questions. Is there a work-around to this? If there's not, should this feature be added?

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  • something like this should work, just sort by votes and start looking from the last page. edit: this will work when the search is less than 5,000 results
    – ajax333221
    Commented Nov 20, 2012 at 3:04
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    possible duplicate of How to find questions with very negative votes?
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 6:52
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    @benisuǝqbackwards: My Question is 2 years older and has a correct answer. so the new one you linked should be the duplicate.
    – Simulant
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 7:31
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    The age is irrelevant and the other has better answers @sim.
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 8:05
  • @benisuǝqbackwards I agree with you. Since the high-reps have marked that question as duplicate, I have posted my updated answer below specifically related to OP's question and his/her own accepted answer.
    – HackerKarma
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 11:37
  • @ajax333221 please see my updated answer below.
    – HackerKarma
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 12:32

3 Answers 3

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Now that the newly posted question How to find questions with very negative votes? has been marked as a duplicate of this question. I would like to post my updated answer for this question specifically addressing the following two questions asked by OP:

OP's question in the title says:

Is it possible to search for down voted questions?

So, as per the question OP wants to find the down voted questions and the answer for that is to search it by entering either of the following two search options in the search box:

score:..-1 is:question

or

votes:..-1 is:question

The above search query will only display all the questions with negative votes. It's very important to include the is:question type option here otherwise just searching with "score:..-1" (as given in the OP's own accepted answer) would result both i.e. questions and answers with negative votes.

Here is a screenshot of result shown using just score:..-1 (top section of the 1st page of the total 9,920 results shown)

enter image description here

If you notice, the last two posts have "answered" in the status posted by user's BalusC and CanSpice respectively. If you click on them, you will see that it's the answer that got the negative vote here whereas the question has only up-votes (and no down-votes).

Here is the screenshot with a search query using score:..-1 is:question option: (notice 7,375 results as oppose to above 9,920 results)

enter image description here

The above search results only displays all the questions with negative votes and have a question status of "asked". So, it is very important to include the is:question type option here.

Now, lets move to the next part of the question. In body of the question OP says: (emphasis mine)

I want to search for new downvoted questions to improve or flag them.

For this, all you have to do is click on the "newest" search tab and search result will be sorted accordingly.

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  • This should be part of the advanced searching tips.
    – Raphael
    Commented Jul 5, 2016 at 8:32
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The feature of searching withing a range of a score has been added. This feature contains also searching for questions with negative votes. use:

score:..-1

Have a look at this question.

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  • 1
    searching with just "score:..-1" would result both i.e. questions and answers with negative votes. Please see my updated answer.
    – HackerKarma
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 14:38
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It looks like searching for votes:-1 is:question does yield questions with at least negative one votes (when ordered by Relevance, the last few pages are all questions with scores of -1, though when they're ordered by votes, the last pages all have scores of 13 for me, which makes it look as though it is not working; it looks like only the first 5000 results or so in the selected order are taken, so the last page will be positively voted questions, since there are more than 5000 of them without further specification) The Search Tips say of the votes option:

posts with a minimum number of votes votes:15 apples oranges

so it looks like there is not currently a way to search for only downvoted questions, since any negative search will include upvoted questions as well, but you can use negative values.

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