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The recent switch to "free" downvotes has a side-effect: As far as I can see, there is no longer a way to see questions one has recently downvoted.

This makes it impossible to find and revisit those questions one has downvoted to see whether they have improved, and if they have, remove the downvote, which is a pretty essential part of voting.

Can we have this feature "back" please?

A concrete suggestion by @Shadow Wizard that I second:

I would suggest clicking your own "votes cast" link should bring you to page showing the full list of posts you downvoted instead of linking to meta.stackoverflow.com/users?tab=voters

Also, Adam Davis has a full-fledged suggestion that I would totally support:

I'd suggest adding a tab that shows posts they've recently voted on (up or down) that have changed. This gives you what you need, without requiring you to click through each voted on post to see if it's changed. It will encourage users to revisit posts that they voted on, since it will be a first-class feature on their account page.

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    Most likely feature request.. I would suggest clicking your own "votes cast" link should bring you to page showing the full list of posts you downvoted instead of linking to meta.stackoverflow.com/users?tab=voters
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    May 16, 2011 at 10:06
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    I support this for both upvotes and downvotes, however Jeff says he removed this feature ages ago and nobody noticed
    – waffles
    May 16, 2011 at 11:12
  • @waffles the rep stats used to provide a convenient list of downvotes until a few days ago because they cost you two points. That side-effect is gone now... it would be nice to have for upvotes as well, but as you say, it would probably be far less used than the downvote stats.
    – Pekka
    May 16, 2011 at 12:01
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    The downvote cost is only gone for questions, so the side effect isn't completely gone.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    May 16, 2011 at 13:36
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    @waffles: I noticed. A little late maybe, but I noticed.
    – mmyers
    May 16, 2011 at 15:39
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    Starting a bounty. This is a real problem.
    – Pekka
    May 19, 2011 at 15:11
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    "This is a big problem, because I can't revisit those questions to see whether they have improved, and if they have, remove the downvote, which is a pretty essential part of voting." It's not a big problem. Very, very few people revisit posts they downvoted on. Of those posts that they revisit, very few change. Of those that change, very few have changed enough to warrant removing the downvote, nevermind deserving an upvote. Your desire to micromanage your voting is not wrong, but asserting that this is a "big problem" when it clearly isn't won't convince anyone.
    – Pollyanna
    May 19, 2011 at 15:37
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    @Adam it's a big problem and a major regression for how I use the site. I can't speak to anyone else's workflow, but I'm not sure it's true that very few people revisit their votes? I have the impression it happens relatively frequently.
    – Pekka
    May 19, 2011 at 16:10

3 Answers 3

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Sure, it is now there.

You now have a special votes tab in your user profile, that lets you scavenge through all your old downvotes, there is one slight caveat, we never show you deleted posts. If you downvote and then the post is deleted, you can not see it in the votes tab.

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  • I guess at some point this would be live on the main site too? ^_^
    – Naftali
    Apr 26, 2012 at 2:16
  • yes ... deploy is pending
    – waffles
    Apr 26, 2012 at 2:22
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    Could the votes cast link in the dropdown be updated too? (meta.stackexchange.com/q/91864)
    – Jeff Mercado
    Apr 26, 2012 at 3:24
  • sure @JeffMercado in the next build
    – waffles
    Apr 26, 2012 at 3:41
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+500

Consider arguing instead for a feature that will encourage users to re-evaluate downvoted posts that have changed since they downvoted them.

I'd suggest adding a tab that shows posts they've recently voted on (up or down) that have changed. This gives you what you need, without requiring you to click through each voted on post to see if it's changed. It will encourage users to revisit posts that they voted on, since it will be a first-class feature on their account page.

It will also give people who post to the site and receive downvotes some additional assurance that if they update their post, they may get additional attention from those that already voted.

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  • Sounds good to me.
    – Pekka
    May 19, 2011 at 16:09
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    @Pekka: And link that one from "votes cast"?
    – Hendrik Vogt
    May 19, 2011 at 19:50
  • @Hendrik yeah, would probably make the most sense!
    – Pekka
    May 19, 2011 at 20:11
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This is a big problem, because I can't revisit those questions to see whether they have improved, and if they have, remove the downvote, which is a pretty essential part of voting.

While everyone is entitled to their own rationales for voting, I would not call this "essential".

By the time I downvote something -- and I am referring to a downvote on a main site, not on a meta where downvote can mean "I strongly disagree with this" -- I have:

  • read and processed the post as written
  • thought about the content of the post; for bad posts, this takes longer as they are typically badly formatted, badly written, and badly researched
  • evaluated it and decided to vote it down

That is a lot of my time wasted on a post because someone phoned it in and couldn't be bothered to do basic research, or form coherent sentences, before writing.

The last thing I am going to do is come back and spend even more of my time changing my vote. Posts should be evaluated as written, not as some idealized best possible future version of themselves.

(within the 5 minute editing window, of course, and I might be willing to cut someone slack if they fix a post within up to 30 minutes after posting.)

As a voting strategy, whatever floats your particular boat. But "pretty essential to the voting"? I don't think so.

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    But this means it's no longer possible to keep an eye on content that has a chance of salvaging - like, rewarding if it gets actually improved, and providing "why the downvote" feedback if the downvotee asks for it, and there is a point in giving it. One would have to keep track of the questions manually, and that would be a huge waste of time.
    – Pekka
    May 23, 2011 at 7:24
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    (cont.) I agree with your general view on voting, but my point is please don't take away the tool I need for the (very few) edge cases where it's worth to spend some more time to try and salvage what's there or give advice.
    – Pekka
    May 23, 2011 at 7:35
  • @Pekka: hmm... I hadn't thought of this as a way of squelching responses to "Why the downvote?" comments, but now that you bring it up I'm less bothered by losing the ability to track such votes. Just think - if you leave a comment, you'll be able to find the post later; if you don't, you'll never be bothered by someone trying to drag one out of you anyway.
    – Shog9
    May 23, 2011 at 7:40
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    Hm, I'm having trouble processing this logic. If downvotes just mean "this is naff, just go away", why not just vote to close? Is downvoting only to encourage people to do better next time? Or shouldn't it also be used to push them towards cleaning up their mess right now? If people don't 'unpunish' them after the cleanup, there's not much incentive to care either way...
    – Benjol
    May 23, 2011 at 7:47
  • @Shog it's usually not worth commenting every downvote simply because there is too much downvoting to be done, but if someone really wants to know, I'm usually happy to respond - and if not, it's easy to just ignore the comment. If revisiting votes is not officially encouraged, fine, but the ability has been useful, I for one missed it badly immediately after it vanished, and it should be reinstated.
    – Pekka
    May 23, 2011 at 7:49
  • @benjol I spend most of my time looking at the worst 5% of content so my voting patterns may be different than yours. I have downvoted posts and then un-downvoted them for reasons other than quality, but this is so much rarer that it's hardly worth thinking about or tracking on a special page as Pekka is proposing.
    – Jeff Atwood
    May 23, 2011 at 7:50
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    @Pekka: I don't have a strong opinion either way (other than that the solution is to Bring back the votes tab)... But personally, I've regretted responding to vote-explanation requests more than I've felt anything of value arose from them, so... lead me not into temptation!
    – Shog9
    May 23, 2011 at 7:54
  • @Jeff, yes, you do sound a bit battle weary and jaded :) TBH I don't downvote enough, so I'm probably not qualified to comment either way.
    – Benjol
    May 23, 2011 at 7:59

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