Anonymous downvotes ruining Stack Overflow for new users, driving them away from a meaningful contribution [duplicate]

Question

I used to be very excited about Stack Overflow. I even started to make it a habit to routinely check for questions with certain tags to try to provide answers. And I did.

Then this happened:

Finding specific patterns in a list

In this question, I felt I had provided an answer exactly as the OP had requested it, where the other answers had not, and since this wasn't obvious, I took the time to point out the flaw or shortcoming of various answers. The end result was 4 downvotes and 0 explanations, of a perfectly valid answer which really was most faithful to what OP had asked.

Then this happened:

What is the quickest way to get a number with unique digits in python?

I provided a simple, concise, very efficient algorithm, completely from scratch and not depending on external libraries, that was faster than most other solutions posted (except one that just called an external library). I received 0 upvotes. The other answers, most of which were slow, and inefficient, and lazy, all received a number of upvotes (14, 7, 3, 0). The only difference is that the other answers had been posted by users of higher reputations, making them seem more "legit".

Today, this happened.

adb shell "operation not permitted" for every command

Two bad anonymous downvotes on a question on which I had taken every effort to make clear, detailed, concise, and so on. I have politely asked for an explanation, but none of the cowardly downvoters have cared.

Why is anonymous downvoting allowed, without a required, if anonymous, explanation? This can completely shatter the experience of new vulnerable users, possibly turning them away from the site as well as their potential contributions.

I have honestly mostly stopped looking for questions to answer, my reputation has stagnated, and I feel this can be the case for a lot of new users who do have a lot to contribute and are discouraged by the abuse of some of these features. I do not see it necessary to risk alienating them in this way during their vulnerable initial stages with SO.

Anonymous downvoting serves well the SO establishment, the users with already comfortably high reps who do not feel the pain of downvoting others. It also serves well the lazy who do not care to write even a short sentence on why they think the question/answer which they downvoted is bad or how it could be improved (which should be everyone's goal).

It also serves well cowards who downvote out of spite or retaliation.

Why is anonymous downvoting a feature in SO? In particular, the feature request here is to enforce a short, optionally anonymous explanation/comment required from the downvoter (something that doesn't have to take more than 2 seconds to type, maybe "misleading title", or "homework problem"). If you care enough to downvote the effort that someone else has put forth, then you can at least be bothered to give a short explanation of why. Such an explanation could be visible to only the downvoted user and to moderators, who could then use these to control the abuse of the feature.

Note: There is the argument that disclosing the identity of the downvoter could enable retaliative downvotes, but this is not necessary. Requiring a short, anonymous comment by the downvoter would keep his anonymity, as well as help the downvoted understand what he could do to improve. It would also deter unjustifiable (revengeful, spiteful) downvotes.

Answer 1

Your suggestion to make comments mandatory for any downvoting will only lead to poorer - filler - comments, not better downvotes. Besides, many times the key reasons for downvoting will be given in the very first comment; what others will have to do, if comments are mandatory, is essentially repeat it - which is plain wrong by any reasons.

Answer 2

You're right that it sucks sometimes when people downvote you, but you'll find that if you keep posting good answers, the law of averages will work in your favor and you'll gain rep. The law of sowing and reaping will get them if they downvoted you unfairly.

I'm one of the most downvoted guys on Meta, but still made a bunch of rep.

Answer 3

Your links one by one:

1. First answer you linked is a code without explanation. It might work, but it's doing thing by rote, not by understanding. Valid reason for downvote. And question itself shows lack of own research, too.

2. Before edit it was an answer to a performance question without any performance comparison in it, valid reason for downvote. And again, question was poor in the first place, asking for code without providing any.

3. Last one looks like something better suited for superuser, it does not involve any code OP wrote by himself - should probably be flagged instead, or left alone but I can see how some might think it deserves downvote.

So, it's not really a problem with kicking noobs. It's the problem of people posting not perfect content, and marking that is what downvotes are meant to.

Answer 4

There is one wrong thinking for all users that get downvoted which is: We think that downvotes reflects our personality, I knew everyone wants to get upvoted, but in reality, downvotes on SO and META are not related to our real life, I also has same thinking when I failed in college and school.

My suggestion for voting: when you click on one of them, there should be manodatory options (reasons) to select for the vote, for example:

Click -> Upvote (select why?)

• Good quality that helps other audiences
• Other reasons (specify)

Click -> Down-vote (select why?)

• off-topic
• The question not provided any detail
• OP not did any research before asking (easy questions)
• etc (other reasons that or you can specify)

Currently these feature also implemented when closing the question, but there are many questions with downvotes and not closed also.

Finally, because there are millions of records, I think these rules might not change, some rules will remain constant.