Over eager downvotes and close votes [closed]

Question

It seems that in the past year or two, the StackOverflow community has become too eager to downvote or vote to close a question that is not phrased perfectly at first. This tendency scares off a lot of people who may become valuable members of the community, and actively interferes with attempts to actually improve or answer a question.

Here's an example of one such question that I've seen recently (deleted by the author out of embarrassment over the downvotes, so only users with sufficient reputation will be able to see this example). It's a question that's reasonably clear; he's asking how to determine a file size using the draft web FileSystem API. He demonstrates what he's tried in the comment (fileEntry.size does not work as you might expect). And yet he got a rash of people telling him to Google it (which doesn't provide very good results), asking what he's tried (he demonstrated exactly what he tried, fileEntry.size, which doesn't work), read a blog entry that doesn't mention how to get the file size, downvoting him, and voting to close. His phrasing could have been a little bit better, he could have expanded on the question a little, but no one really gave him the time to do that.

In the meantime, I was doing some research and experimentation. The spec isn't the most clear, but I was able to figure out how to do it, and provide an answer. However, presumably because he didn't want to get more downvotes, he deleted the question. Now he's had a bad experience at StackOverflow, and my time has been wasted since no one else will now be able to find this answer via Google.

This isn't the only example of this happening, just the most recent. Sometimes, with questions that aren't perfect from the start, I find myself having to race against the close-voters to actually answer it or ask the right questions to get the questioner to be able to clarify properly. I feel that the community is being hurt by this; on a site where we're supposed to be helping people, we're just pushing them away.

Now, I understand frustration with people who just don't get it, and wanting them to just go away. But being too quick to downvote or close can be quite harmful. What can we do as a community to be more welcoming and more willing to help people improve questions that are almost, but not quite up to standards, rather than scaring them off?

I'll note that I've also seen many people on other forums (Hacker News, for instance) tell me that they avoid StackOverflow because of this over-aggressive attitude towards closing. For an example, see this recent thread, where lots of people, including people who have decently high reputation and so are not clueless newbies, indicate that they have been off-put by this behavior.

Answer 1

Your question does not make sense. Here is why: needs some work and should be closed are the same thing. Sure, it would be great if people would edit questions themselves when they aren't clear, adding in things the OP put in the comments and so on, but there's no obligation to do so: if a question needs so much work it can't be answered in its current state, it should be closed. If a question can be understood, but is lacking in some way, it should be downvoted. Period.

You think they should get some time to fix up their question? That's exactly what on hold is. FIVE DAYS in which the question will not be deleted. They or others can edit it. If they edit it, it will automatically be nominated for re-opening. But you want on top of that some other grace period in which people see something that should be closed (so it can be corrected) but don't vote to close it? In fact, can't vote to close it? What would be the point of that?

If you want to edit these things into shape more power to you. And if you want to write nice comments explaining to people how they can edit their own questions into shape that's even better. The close voters, meanwhile, are providing the motivation those posters need to do (or provide information for) those edits. Because as long as you're open, you might get an answer without improving your question. And that's a path that does not lead to improved questions; it leads to "I've got mine" people who never think about the question again once they got their answer. Since questions and their answers are as much for the searchers as those who wrote them, this is a bad thing.

Answer 2

Edit:

in response to the point by point arguments you've detailed in the comments, it's clear that the problem is that you are annoyed the community didn't share the same collective conscious as what you do.

To be crystal clear: just because a question "needs some work" that doesn't excuse it from the community's judgement. IOW, there is no reason why it can't be down or close voted - the onus is on the owner or the community to fix the question. That also means you. Did you take the time to fix the question?

Note that this is not a new "problem", there have been many steps taken in the past to alleviate it. Posting a new discussion question about it and leaving a prolific amount of comments is going to do little to "solve" it. All we have so far is that the problem hasn't got worse, you've got no suggestions on how to fix it, so this question isn't particularly productive (except it may help you vent and make you feel a little bit better).

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You have an absolutely valid observation. However I'd like to point out a couple of things:

• just because you understand (and can answer) the question that doesn't mean it should stay open. Through whatever circumstance it's still a terrible question that needs to be worked over.

• while what happened is frustrating, you can't (and shouldn't try to) beat the community. A jury of your peers acted on what they saw, and the owner wasn't inclined to bring the question up to standard. Don't blame the jury, blame the owner of the question - they couldn't be bothered doing what was necessary.

• your problem is not that the question collected down votes, but that it was deleted. You'll have to get used to this - you can submit a fantastic answer but there can be a bunch of reasons why it ends up goneburger.

• you can't stop a user from deleting their own question. It can still be retrieved, but you'll need to rely on the community to support your viewpoint that it's worthy of it (the question would still need to be fixed). Moderators can also undelete but I don't know if any of the moderators would do so it if it was deleted by the owner - you would have to have an incredibly compelling reason and most likely the question would have to be disassociated from the user (that's a big hill to climb).

If the value in your answer is truly good enough that it shouldn't be lost, then consider recreating the question and then self answering it.

I'll note that I've also seen many people on other forums ... tell me that they avoid StackOverflow because of this over-aggressive attitude towards closing.

That's a shame, but the site cannot be all things to all people. The standards are there for a reason - this is a big site that generates a lot of traffic, it would quickly lose relevancy and accuracy (and therefore value) if there were no standards applied.

To be quite brutally honest, the most valuable resource on the site is not the people who ask the questions, it's the people who provide good answers. Questions are easy, answers are hard. Many of the good answerers are busy professional people with a level of expertise that demands a good dollar rate per hour. If you start allowing crap questions then you will quickly lose these people, (to put it diplomatically) the site will degenerate to the point where you only have non-experts answering the questions of other non-experts.

Answer 3

While you may have a point about some questions, it's exactly as you say, what can we do to be more welcoming/friendly/less-scary?

From what I can see, there are a handful of options, but I don't see any of them as "good":

• Tell people to be nicer : I can't see how this could possibly work, but it seems to be the general consensus from some that we should be nicer as a community. Without completely undoing the user-governed aspect of SO that makes it what it is, how can we do that? People suck, especially on the internet. Even if we outlined some key aspects to look for to spot a borderline question, how could you enforce it?

• Discourage close-voting : Whether it's by limiting votes/day, weighting votes by user history, or anything else, the outcome I expect for this is that we get less closed questions overall. That means both the truly bad and the borderline get closed less, and we "drown in bad questions"

• Discourage downvoting : The most straightforward way to do this is to make downvoting a question come with a rep hit like it does for answers. I swear I've seen a post around here about that, and the consensus was that it made truly bad questions less visible to those who could close, and more bad ones would remain open.

• Change the privilege level : The most immediate effect would be less voters in general, which could be bad for reasons already mentioned. Second, if 3k isn't the right level, what it? At any given level, there are going to be people who have different opinions on a question.

From what I've seen, the mods do care about this, and have tried to address it. For example, the new close reasons seem much less "scary" and vague than the old ones did, and they even changed the wording from [closed] to [on hold] in an attempt to be friendlier. The dialogs tell the OP in fairly clear terms (IMO) what's wrong with the post.

I will agree that voting is skewed in favor of closing over opening, but I think that's a good thing in general. Yes, some questions do get hammered unjustly, but it's better than the other way around.

Of course, the SO-approved way to fix this problem is to edit it to be a better question. Instead of racing the voters to answer it, why not just edit it into something meaningful? If the OP doesn't want to fix it, and neither does anyone else, why should it stay open?

Answer 4

Every now and then I read these Meta-Posts about that whe should be nicer to new users, and we should guide each one of them until they understand how the system works.

You know what? I completely disagree with these suggestions.

I never had the problem that my first questions were not "good" enough, that they were downvoted or closed very fast. The help center (formarly known as FAQ) is very clear about how asking a question works, and you just need to view some questions to see which are acceptable and which are not.

It's not that hard. Once someone has written a question, s/he just has to read it once again and check:

• Is the question clear?
• Does it include example code?
• Did I show my research effort?

That's it. As easy as that.

If someone did not read the rules, and therefore wrote a question that will be put "On hold" (not even closed!) - why should we manually explain the rules to that user?

_{By the way, I have written a proposal some time ago with an idea how to "force" new users more to really show research effort.}

Answer 5

I feel like people are treating closing and downvoting as two things coming together (even throughout previous answers here, which I'm surprised with). They are not. Closing gives an opportunity to improve the question (if it is new), while downvoting only punishes them, since it influences the reputation and there is usually no constructive comment explaining it. While closing is not a pleasant thing for newbies, IMO it is closer to constructive critique which we should aim for when trying to make people use SO in a right way.

I usually try to stick to the following guidelines:

• If a valid question is badly formulated, edit it.
• If a question can be edited by OP to be a valid question, close it.
• If a question is beyond salvation, then close it. If the OP is not new, downvote it, if it is OP's first question - consider if it is worth doing.

And in all cases above, leave comments explaining why and what you've done or what the OP should do. I don't think that starting wars with downvoters is worth it - most of them will never get back to the question again (if they do, let them learn by your example), but the user can always improve it or just learn to ask better questions in the future.

My opinion is that closing is good - it is a time out when OP can improve question or at least see the message why the question is closed and go through links with SO rules. It should not be discouraged, in fact, the quicker this happens, the better (yep, we all know the size of that queue, sigh).

Downvoting is not bad per se, but is often abused and in these cases serve no purpose. Most often no comments left (apart from some ironic one-liners) and so OP doesn't even know what's hit him or her. The culture of using SO in a proper way is hard to develop, not everyone is going to spend hours on meta reading huge discussions about how to properly treat this and that. Unless there is some feedback (i.e., reputation penalty), this problem won't go away. But for now all you can do is to follow the code of conduct you choose for yourself and lead by example :)

PS: I consider upvoting bad question just because you disagree with downvotes as another example of misuse of the system. Your vote shouldn't depend on the question score, only on its contents.

Answer 6

"being too quick to downvote or close can be quite harmful. What can we do as a community"

We can stop having questions which have only been active for a few minutes show up in the close vote review queue.

Reproduce this behavior.

• Click Review on SO main. Click Close Votes.
• Click filter, use tag javascript
• Look at the question asked (probably within the last hour)
• Click Skip
• Look at the question asked (probably within the last hour)..

Continue. It takes a long time to get past the 1 hour mark in a tag which is so active. Have to really hustle to close all of those if you want to start getting into the yesterday territory. A quick reviewer will be able to downvote and close their fair share of 20 questions (80% of which will be in the last hour).