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I asked a very silly question here on Meta and was downoted by people who disagreed with my request. Now, since I'm new to Meta I don't quite understand how it works. On SO I would assume that you would post an answer and then that would get voted up or down.

On Meta it appears we vote down if we disagree with it. This has the effect of removing it from the main page. Is this effect intentional?

On SO the -1 to the question was always to mark an inappropriate question, spam or completely nonsensical question. I would believe that my question, in the context of Meta was acceptable.

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    You are on a roll today. :) On meta, downvotes can mean bad question/all the normal reasons OR simple disagreement with the feature request or idea. – Troggy Nov 16 '09 at 23:42
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Please think of the bunnies!

enter image description here

Bad etiquette or not, this is how the culture of meta has evolved. We need an outlet for all our subjectivity that we close on SO. :)

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  • Evolved is such a strong word, I prefer "crawled out of the primordial internets ooze' or 'created by Joel & Jeff in their image'... :-) – beggs Nov 17 '09 at 6:14
  • In a flash I read "bunnies" as "business"... – iBug says Reinstate Monica Jun 20 '17 at 9:14
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In this case, the object being downvoted is not incorrect information or noise, but merely a question to which people felt the answer was 'no'.

In this context, those people should be giving answers of no, or upvoting answers that say no. That is the correct way to use the system.

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  • Voting on questions should have different criteria than voting on answers here? Of course, I'd rather that there were two votes for answers and only one for questions. And yet, that hasn't happened. MSE is broken because the people who use it don't care and have become comfortable with a lazy and uncouth system. – can-ned_food Mar 5 '18 at 23:03
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Yes it will disappear from the front page, but currently Meta is the only site that functions on a discussion level, so I doubt it will get addressed soon.

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    So is this a moderation issue? Is it bad etiquette to downvote a question because you disagree with it as opposed to it not being appropriate or spam? – Quibblesome Nov 17 '09 at 0:03
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    It's a Meta issue, we operate like this and it's basically our fault that we do. But we like it :) – Ólafur Waage Nov 17 '09 at 0:10
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If we are not supposed to downvote incorrect information on meta, how do we eliminate noise or express disagreement?

Why do people take downvoting on meta so personally

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