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My questions are continuously being down-voted, and nobody is bothering to leave a comment describing why are they down-voting it. In my point of view, my questions are fairly legitimate. I think it is called "serial down-voting", as mentioned here.

I saw three of my questions getting down-voted, although I don't see any reason for it, and them not telling any reason in comments proves it.

Likewise, a couple of my questions were down-voted, and even marked as duplicate of each other, and the down-voting made my reputation fall below 15. I could not even upvote good answers to my questions after that. Yesterday, I flagged those comments and mentioned the reasons when flagging them.

Now I think this is happening again. So please tell me if there is something wrong with them, so that can I fix them? If it's a serial downvoting, please take the proper action.

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  • 1
    There are some things to work on. More research before asking, don't ask too broad questions etc. I've edited a title too, "to get downvotes and nobody" was quite confusing.
    – Danubian Sailor
    Apr 4, 2014 at 11:33
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    Okay I won't sugar coat this. They just don't like you.
    – NoName
    Jun 27, 2017 at 9:23
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    Funny I just got a downvote on a question that generated 11 upvotes and was asked 3 years ago for no reason!....i think a 'reason' should always be required with a downvote..
    – Jeryl Cook
    Jan 20, 2018 at 17:22
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    I was told that duplicate questions are not liked. But it's kind of a chicken and egg situation for people looking for answers, if they don't know what to search for until their question is answered.
    – gornvix
    Nov 14, 2020 at 15:28
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    From Wikipedia: "There's no such thing as a stupid question". I can understand downvoting answers, but why discourage people from asking questions? If a beginner or a non-native English speaker could not form the question just right, shouldn't we as community try to help by explaining what's wrong? The truly stupid or off-topic questions should be rare and should probably be deleted by the user or moderator so they don't appear in searches.
    – sun2sirius
    Jul 15, 2021 at 9:02
  • I found this question by googling. I'm also facing this issue. Some cool kid just downvotes my post each day consistently even though some posts are very old and maintain a good response from the community for a long time. Downvoting a post is fine but serial downvotes should be not allowed. I'm surprised that there is no system yet developed to tackle this toxic behavior.
    – Innat
    Jan 15, 2022 at 12:09
  • Even this post has got some downvotes without explanation 🤔. Downvotes without explanation should be treated as spam. I wish it was mandatory to write an explanation, at least anonymously. The downvote should be removed if the explanation is not found to be satisfactory possibly after peer reviewing or the necessary changes have been made to the respective post.
    – hafiz031
    Sep 14 at 7:50

2 Answers 2

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As you might have noticed, I've gone around your recent questions to give them a touch up. Overall your questions seem rather okay but there are a few points I'd like to note though

  1. "Thank you in advance" and other fluff like "I'm a beginner" shouldn't be in your question. They take time away from other people interpreting it and it doesn't add any value.

  2. You're asking for an example several times. Asking for code is not allowed and usually someone will give you examples anyway; if they are going to answer your question. By explicitly asking for them you're just risking your question will get closed.

  3. Be careful you don't make your questions too broad. Out of the 5 or 6 questions I reviewed, I would say that this one is the one that really shouldn't have been posted. It is way too broad and nobody can know exactly where you were stuck with your understanding of the problem. Give a clear description of where you got stuck and then people can actually.

  4. Asking people not to downvote will only make it more likely they will. Don't put ideas in our heads (it's also fluff or noise).

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  • When I don't have enough reputation to up-vote an answer, can I write "thank you" in comments on an answer, or is that also fluff?
    – Solace
    Apr 4, 2014 at 11:32
  • If you are the person that asked the question, sure. It's not encouraged but it's not actively discouraged either. We're not taking this into extremis (at least, not as far as I know) but it is more to prevent everyone that passes by to leave a "thank you": that would clutter the comment section very quickly.
    – Jeroen Vannevel
    Apr 4, 2014 at 11:34
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Serial downvoting is when one user goes and downvotes posts by one, other user.

I see 4 downvotes in total on your account, 2 on one post, the other two with quite a time distance from the others. This is not serial downvoting, not even close.

You seem to be complaining about a single downvote from earlier - hardly serial.

As for why people don't leave comments when downvoting? Because it is not a requirement. I can't speak for those who downvoted, but sometimes we see downvotes that we can't explain.

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    Wouldn't it make sense that downvoters should provide a(n anonymous) reason?
    – Herbert
    Mar 23, 2018 at 12:28
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    @Oded Hi Today i have seen. I have asked 3 questions and it around now 1 year or later. Somebody all of my 3 question downvoting. Is there any way to point it out ? According to me somebody go to my profile and Serial downvoting it.
    – Saveen
    Aug 1, 2018 at 17:22
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    @Saveen - I am no longer working at Stack Overflow and I don't have access to see exactly what happened. Though looking at your profile page reputation tab, 2 downvotes at around the same time can be seen. There is nothing I can do about it, so I suggest either raising a new question about this or trying to contact an employee.
    – Oded
    Aug 1, 2018 at 17:25
  • I have the same problem. Oded, do you mind looking at my question to tell me the reason it was downvoted. bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/questions/11612/…
    – Andy
    Mar 12, 2020 at 22:09
  • @Andy Well Oded doesn't work at SE anymore, so he can't. And even if someone finds out who downvoted, they wouldn't know the reason. But looking at the comments my guess is that you should have done more research prior to asking the question.
    – 10 Rep
    Sep 5, 2020 at 1:25
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    Getting an answer to a problem with a search on Google is going to work for people in a lot of cases, and they won't create duplicate questions. However if you have a problem that does not have an error message, for example, then it can be a chicken and egg situation, where you don't know what to research/search for.
    – gornvix
    Nov 14, 2020 at 15:34
  • Yes, but in that case the asker should have a reproducible example of what is not producing the expected result or an error. If you are trying something, and it doesn't work, they can describe the situation, the issue at play, and provide their attempt. These would make such a question on-topic.
    – codewario
    Aug 18, 2021 at 20:36

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