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I am new here, but I’ve noticed that downvoting on this site tends to be quite virulent with respect to off-topic questions or questions which probably are poorly formulated.
Though I understand the therapeutic nature of up/downvoting in motivating users in doing better, I really wonder if an excessive use of this feature actually makes it less effective in the end.
A few examples in the last couple of days:
I am new here, but I’ve noticed that downvoting on this site tends to be quite virulent with respect to off-topic questions or questions which probably are poorly formulated.
Off-topic questions are downvoted to a.) decrease their visibility on the front page (-8 is needed for that), and b.) allow regular users to start voting to delete them. (needs a score of -3 to avoid a 48 hour waiting period)
Questions tagged feature-request get downvotes/upvotes depending on whether people agree or disagree with the proposed change. Should (and could) we require the tour badge (and/or rep) to give answers?, for example, is such a feature-request.
This also happens sometimes on questions tagged discussion. People that don't have the time to write an answer signal their agreement or disagreement with the premises in the question by using their up/downvotes.
There is something to say about not using your votes for (dis)agreement on questions tagged discussion, but to judge them by their merit: Is this a useful discussion to have? Have we had this discussion many times before, did the person putting this up for discussion do their research effort? Is the discussion clearly written, is it clear what we should discuss?
Looking at your examples, On which site is it easier to earn reputation? and Is downvoting a well-written question by a beginner OK? might well have gotten downvotes for being not a very useful discussion (easiest to get rep) or something that has been discussed over, and over, and over (downvotes).
Then there are questions tagged support, they usually get downvotes for 'lacking research effort'. In other words, the downvotes usually mean 'you could've known this if you spent a few minutes trying to understand how the site works'. I guess those are the ones that I'd like to see a bit less downvoted: If there's no duplicate, or the info is not easily found... Having those downvoted a lot seems/feels unfair.
What I don’t understand is the aggressive attitude of this site...
Downvotes may come across as mean or aggressive, but they aren't meant to be. They're meant to filter content and have good discussions rise to the top, and push the questions that are unclear, lack research effort, or aren't useful to the bottom/off the front page. Please don't ever take them personally.
I disagree with your assertion that downvoting is aggressive on this site.
I see people downvoting for reasons that I interpret are related to the suggestions for when to downvote on its tooltip.
Sometimes those downvotes on Meta sites merely indicate disagreement.
Of the four questions you linked to I agreed with one and upvoted it but the others I downvoted because I either disagreed with them, thought they lacked effort or were not useful for another reason.
I think two key factors are at play here:
The question linked by πάντα ῥεῖ, and the section "Voting is different on meta" in the Help Center article What is "meta"? How does it work? explain that there are more reasons to downvote questions than just quality/usefulness: downvotes may indicate disagreement with the proposed solution or the way the question is framed. The Help Center says this is reserved for feature-requests, but in practice it often carries over to discussions.
As a prime example, a discussion about the downvoting culture on this site might be very useful (even though similar discussion have happened in the past already). Yet, it's heavily downvoted. Let me explain why I think that happened (YMMV). Objectively speaking, this question is worded in a fairly neutral way (which is what we expect from all questions by all users on all sites in the network), except for the second word in the original title. The word "aggressive" can be used in a neutral way, but it needs non-verbal support for that; when written down this way it sets the tone "you're doing it wrong" to the entire Meta community (even though that might not have been your intention). It doesn't matter that the rest of this post is well-written; it's the first impression that matters. The old Be Nice policy stated: assume good intentions. This is a responsibility of both the OP and the community. However, a poor choice of words can make users (both new ones and veterans) easily forget this.
On main sites, questions disappear from the homepage once they have a score of -4 or lower. On Meta, this is -8. Therefore, downvoted questions stay visible for a longer period and tend to accumulate more downvotes than on other sites.
Yes, it does. Suppose I have a feature-request or discussion topic in mind, and I search on the site before asking it (or I examine the 'Questions that may already have your answer' on the Ask Question page). If I see a similar question with a very low score, I might think twice before posting my similar-but-not-exactly-the-same question. And that's a Good Thing™.
