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When I downvote posts I get "Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved." popping up in an overlay. That's fine as a "once in a while" reminder, but it's shown every time, which gets rather annoying when downvoting several posts in a row. Similarly, the "remember you can mark this answer as accepted" message can get annoying when I'm usually just about to do that or I'm upvoting multiple answers, but can only accept one of them.

I have two suggestions:

  1. Adding some limits one how often these are shown. I don't think either warning should be shown more than once every few hours. Alternatively, you could avoid showing it more than once per thread (or perhaps per thread per day).
  2. A user option to turn this feature off entirely. I'm well aware of my ability to comment and accept answers. It's just not something I need to be reminded of all the time.
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    Ah, you must have seen the popup, "Please consider adding a feature request if you believe this website can be improved." – Adam Davis Dec 15 '09 at 2:52
  • +1 No, actually, I figured that out all on my own, without any annoying popups to help me. :) – EMP Dec 15 '09 at 3:40
  • Well, did you add a comment everytime it poped up? – Lucas Dec 15 '09 at 8:04
  • Erm, no... I didn't. I clicked on it to make it go away as fast as possible. – EMP Dec 15 '09 at 22:17
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The popup will go away when you achieve 2000 reputation -- a worthy goal, don't you think?

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    I have and it didn't. But even if it did, I don't support annoying people as a way of getting them to contribute. – EMP Dec 15 '09 at 3:37
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    answer threshold is 1000, downvote threshold is 2000. – Jeff Atwood Dec 15 '09 at 8:35
  • OK, that explains why I still get the message. So it's not a bug, it's a feature. :) But I still think the feature is an unnecessarily annoying one. – EMP Dec 15 '09 at 22:16
  • It's annoying only if it's unnecessary, but unfortunately the SO engine is unable to determine if it's necessary :) Perhaps it could make a better attempt, say to only show the popup for the first N downvotes a user gives, but that's a harder calculation as it requires a DB search. – Ether Dec 15 '09 at 22:22
  • I’m 100% with Evgeny here. You are annoying your users, not encouraging them, by telling them they have to work and sweat for months before they can have any reasonable non-annoying behaviour from a website. – Timwi Aug 22 '10 at 14:08

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