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I have some suggestions on down-voting.

  1. If a person has performed a downvote on particular post without telling the reason behind it, then how can the OP knows why his/her post is downvoted? Of course the SO shows this Ajax reminder:

    Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved

I think this reminder is being neglected in most of the cases.

My Suggestion:

In this case there is a need to make the reason behind downvoting mandatory.

OR

At least the OP should be able to know the person who downvoted his/her post.

so that the OP can ask the particular person to know the reason behind the downvote. It also helps the OP to modify the question as per the reason/suggestion stated.

Of course there is a tooltip on the downvote button itself :

"This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful".

This is also been neglected in some of the cases.

Eg;- Why this Question got a downvote of -2? I don't see any reason for downvote.

Question-ban:

So the user gets a question-ban if most of his/her questions get downvotes. This help on SO clearly states this:

**Stack Exchange cannot lift question bans by request**

I think the SO is not being user-friendly at this point.

What if the downvote stays for the question/questions even after improving the post/posts? Then that user is banned for asking a question on SO permanently?

My suggestion:

The question-ban should be made as temporary for some period of hours or days.

Any other suggestions are also welcomed! Thanks!

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  • 13
    The first suggestion has literally been made hundreds and hundreds of times before. Check out Encouraging people to explain downvotes The second suggestion is likely to be unpopular - when you hit the question ban, you have contributed loads of bad content without getting the hint. What point is there in letting those users continue doing that after a certain period of time?
    – Pekka
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:49
  • @Pekka Well, the first one has. There's two suggestions here, which there shouldn't be.
    – Billy Mailman
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:50
  • Ofcourse this is asked soo many times.Did you check my suggestions atleast.
    – Pavan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:50
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    "The question-ban should be made as temporary for some period of hours or days." ... so you can just wait it out before you continue posting crap? No thanks. Improve and get unbanned that way. Then we can be reasonably certain you'll contribute better content from there on out.
    – Bart
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:50
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    Actually, the question ban is user-friendly, just not in the way that you think.
    – user102937
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:54
  • 2
    I suspect the back-button question was downvoted because you didn't search before asking -- i.e., it shows no research effort. Search on StackOverflow for "disable browser back button" and you'll see that your question has been asked and answered hundreds of times, just as this one has!
    – Ernest Friedman-Hill
    Feb 22, 2014 at 15:57
  • @all thanks for your useful suggestions.Good night
    – Pavan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:45
  • @Pëkka Many users do not explain the ban.
    – neverMind9
    Mar 20, 2019 at 3:05
  • @RobertHarvey I got a question ban after asking a question that got upvoted. The system is flawed.
    – neverMind9
    Mar 20, 2019 at 3:06

2 Answers 2

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In this case there is a need to make the reason behind downvoting as mandatory.

Nope. There's no reason for anyone here to have to explain their votes if they aren't so inclined.

There's also the use case that it's a quick-hit: suppose they saw that question in the newsletter, and didn't think it was a very good question, or that the answers weren't satisfactory. They're only looking at the newsletter on their quick break, so they don't have time to elaborate why they disagreed with the question/answer.

The question-ban should be made as temporary for some period of hours or days.

Nope. If you're in the habit of asking poor questions (or detracting from the community), the only way you should be able to redeem yourself is to contribute to the community in a more positive manner.

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    But it distracts the user to make duplicate profiles and making upvoting his/her questions by himself/herself
    – Pavan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:02
  • That's actually really bad. You could be removed from the community for doing that. I wouldn't take downvotes that seriously. It could mean that you're just wrong with an answer, or the question had already been asked.
    – Makoto
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:05
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    I'm referring that point to question-ban case
    – Pavan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:06
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    So was I, to an extent. Realize that creating more accounts to circumvent the ban hurts you way more than it helps.
    – Makoto
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:08
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    you may not take downvotes that seriously.But there are most of the users like me who asked this type of questions are well frustrated by getting downvote without reason.I would bet on that.
    – Pavan
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:20
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    @Pavan -- they are not downvotes without reason. See my comment on your question above. If you ask a question that has been asked many times before, it will be downvoted. If you ask a "question" which is really just "please give me the code for this", then it will be downvoted. You've been question-banned because you asked many very bad questions. Admitting this is the first step towards getting unbanned.
    – Ernest Friedman-Hill
    Feb 22, 2014 at 16:39
  • @ErnestFriedman-Hill if the question has been asked many times before you should have no problem clicking "Close as duplicate" and provide a reference. This takes literally no more than 30 seconds. No one should be allowed to down-vote questions without providing a reasonable explanation, even if all they do is up-vote an existing comment before downvoting the question. Downvoting without any explanation is lazy and harmful to the community.
    – Gili
    Mar 16, 2014 at 6:37
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    “Nope. There's no reason for anyone here to have to explain their votes if they aren't so inclined.” How are users expected to improve then?
    – neverMind9
    Mar 20, 2019 at 3:06
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Votes are supposed to be anonymous. Requiring a comment with a vote identifies the voter. No thanks.

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  • -1: Why should votes be anonymous? How does this result in a better community with better questions/answers?
    – Gili
    Mar 16, 2014 at 6:38
  • @Gili If votes are not anonymous, it means that you are forced to reveal your vote. How does that help, other than inviting retribution?
    – Matthew Lundberg
    Mar 16, 2014 at 13:04
  • Good point about retribution, but downvoting without an explanation is an equally huge problem in my opinion. We need to find a way to solve it.
    – Gili
    Mar 17, 2014 at 3:59
  • @Gili That's where we disagree (and why you downvoted my answer). A vote alone is a message, and sometimes the only message that needs to be sent. You always have the opportunity to add a comment with a vote, and if you think that the question might be improved to the point where you would remove a downvote or even add an upvote, you should comment so the author can contact you upon an edit. But note that it is not appropriate to comment with "+1" when you upvote -- the upvote is enough. So is a bare downvote -- in my opinion.
    – Matthew Lundberg
    Mar 17, 2014 at 4:05
  • Here is my counter-example: stackoverflow.com/q/19596930/14731 ... I still don't understand what is wrong with the question/answer.
    – Gili
    Mar 17, 2014 at 5:14
  • Well, I know zero about Jersey, but your question and answer are essentially link-only. That is discouraged. To improve them, explain in the question and the answer what is going on.
    – Matthew Lundberg
    Mar 17, 2014 at 5:16
  • Fixed. Thanks for pointing this out.
    – Gili
    Mar 18, 2014 at 6:11

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