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Possible Duplicates:
Leaving an anonymous comment when voting.
Encouraging people to explain down-votes

People downvote with no comments, gives no idea what is wrong with an answer or question. If revealing the identity of downvoter is the concern, please at least allow a comment for downvote anonymously.

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  • 8
    Content-free comment
    – womble
    Dec 8, 2009 at 2:49
  • 1
    Dupe of meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6521/…
    – womble
    Dec 8, 2009 at 2:50
  • 6
    Did you just skip that box with all those Related questions when posting?
    – random
    Dec 8, 2009 at 2:51
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    Is this going to come up weekly now?
    – John Rudy
    Dec 8, 2009 at 3:05
  • On SO, you've been downvoted 4 times in two months. You have no answers with a score less than 0, meaning that every single downvote had at least one other upvote to offset it. I wouldn't sweat it too much. Post for post, you're doing OK.
    – John Rudy
    Dec 8, 2009 at 3:16
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    @JohnRudy I hope it does come up weekly. I get tired of seeing people downvote things for stupid reasons. I don't think there should be anonymous commnets, I think it should post the names of people who downvote.
    – Brandon Moore
    Nov 17, 2011 at 0:06
  • Can you please express uour opinion on marking question as duplicate at the following link: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219750/…
    – Revious
    Feb 5, 2014 at 19:58

4 Answers 4

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We already provide a <div> reminder when voting down, to users below 2000 reputation:

please consider leaving a comment if you think this post can be improved

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  • 1
    Something like a list of radio buttons would be better.
    – Mark Cidade
    Nov 3, 2011 at 19:23
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Requiring people to do things will. Never. Work. You cannot require people to leave comments when they downvote:

  1. This creates spam when someone gives a really bad answer. Do we need 20 comments saying "Your answer sucks" or would one comment with 20 upvotes serve the same purpose (with a lot less flooding of the comment thread)?
  2. There's no way to prevent people from leaving useless junk comments (like "asfdsgjhadsgasfsd" or "+1 great answer") to avoid having to explain their downvotes.
  3. Most people simply don't care enough.
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  • 5
    And why should I have to justify my vote to anyone, whether it be an upvote or a downvote? Kind of defeats the purpose of voting, does it not?
    – John Rudy
    Dec 8, 2009 at 3:09
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I always try to down-vote with a comment, which I think helps the community. However enforcing someone to leave a comment (even if 'anonymous') may not yield meaningful message. It probably discourages down-voting.

A down-voter is getting a hit of -1, that 'sacrifice' should mean that they are not likely to be down-voting for fun or abusing.

The current situation of using a reminder is sufficient (at least that's how I feel).

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My main objection is that the solution to the problems of anonymity is not more anonymity.

Consider this scenario: this system would allow you to leave an anonymous comment where you currently can't so you'll likely encourage downvotes just so people can leave anonymous comments.

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  • And then people can retract their downvotes in the fraction-of-a-second-change-your-mind-time-that-seriously-needs-to-be-lengthened-Jeff-I-hope-you're-reading-this and get their 1 rep back.
    – Super Long Names are Hilarious
    Dec 8, 2009 at 3:55

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