4 ms·

> Excuse for what? SO has the UI instruction that you /should/, as a user who agreed to follow the rules, downvote low effort questions which show no research.

> Excuse for what? SO has the UI instruction that you /should/, as a user who agreed to follow the rules, downvote low effort questions which show no research. Agreeing to follow the site rules, then not following the site rules and deciding it should be run the way you want it to be run instead, isn't good for the site either. How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research? I've seen a ton of those that have done their research and have gotten downvoted. In addition to those I have personal experience where I list what I've tried and found, and still get downvoted. I have to say, not listing any research has ended up better for me. It's an excuse for just downvoting without really a good, constructive reason. It's absolutely fallacious to keep iterating over the same "it's a feature, not a bug" argument, the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist, same applies to the Stack Overflow Meta as well. > Saying that people "should be held accountable" for their downvotes on an internet site is not "provable by means of experiment", it's "people I disagree with should be punished". How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable? If you feel you are punished when you have to explain why then you shouldn't downvote. > Calling people "snarky asses" is not experimental, it's subjective interpretation. It's your interpretation of "snarky ass" you can't detect by observation of comments. I myself can verify by observation that such comments exist. > Describing downvoting as lacking empathy, on a site where downvotes are intended to describe the question not the author, is subjective interpretation. You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people. Oh, and let's not forget, it's not a subjective interpretation that people get negative emotions towards random downvotes being thrown at them, it's very visibly observable one, might even say it's empirical.

galaxyLogic 7y ago
> random downvotes being thrown at them True. And I would say "random unjustified" down-votes. Because if they are not required to explain their down-vote the simplest Occam's Razor explanation for such down-votes is that they just wanted to be a jerk. This is a system-problem with Stack Overflow. They could easily require that every down-vote is given a verbal justification AND also that down-votes can be down-voted (with a similar verbal justification). Down-vote without explanation is like a punch in the face in the dark you can not counter-punch, and you know they know you can not, and therefore you know that is one factor on why they are doing it. That is the reason why it feels hostile. Now of course somebody who punches you can SAY they don't mean it as a hostile action, but do you believe them?
jodrellblank 7y ago
> How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research? The guidelines say "shows research" - hover over the downvote arrow on StackOverflow and read the tooltip - so who knows how many? That said, you're discussing it for you writing a well researched question, but the META arguments are usually for the thousands of "give me the codez pls" homework dumps which get filtered out before most people see them, because the downvotes put them into the review queues and effectively cause them to be filtered. > the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist SO have not changed this policy, despite lots of feedback, for years and years. Shouldn't we assume they have good reasons even if we don't know what they are? "we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming." The users of a library are not the book authors. The feeling of the book authors about the reviews on their books doesn't come into the design of a library, for one example. So maybe we do know what their reasons are - their actions say they bring in a 'welcoming' policy before they change the downvotes. > How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable? You said "high-rank users will be more accountable for their behaviour [which is] being snarky asses", that is very different from "every downvote should be explained". > You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people. I have argued the same thing on HN before, downvotes is a terrible UI design for SO. But they are the design, and here I'm arguing that should be respected.

galaxyLogic 7y ago

> random downvotes being thrown at them True. And I would say "random unjustified" down-votes. Because if they are not required to explain their down-vote the simplest Occam's Razor explanation for such down-votes is that they just wanted to be a jerk. This is a system-problem with Stack Overflow. They could easily require that every down-vote is given a verbal justification AND also that down-votes can be down-voted (with a similar verbal justification). Down-vote without explanation is like a punch in the face in the dark you can not counter-punch, and you know they know you can not, and therefore you know that is one factor on why they are doing it. That is the reason why it feels hostile. Now of course somebody who punches you can SAY they don't mean it as a hostile action, but do you believe them?

jodrellblank 7y ago

> How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research? The guidelines say "shows research" - hover over the downvote arrow on StackOverflow and read the tooltip - so who knows how many? That said, you're discussing it for you writing a well researched question, but the META arguments are usually for the thousands of "give me the codez pls" homework dumps which get filtered out before most people see them, because the downvotes put them into the review queues and effectively cause them to be filtered. > the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist SO have not changed this policy, despite lots of feedback, for years and years. Shouldn't we assume they have good reasons even if we don't know what they are? "we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming." The users of a library are not the book authors. The feeling of the book authors about the reviews on their books doesn't come into the design of a library, for one example. So maybe we do know what their reasons are - their actions say they bring in a 'welcoming' policy before they change the downvotes. > How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable? You said "high-rank users will be more accountable for their behaviour [which is] being snarky asses", that is very different from "every downvote should be explained". > You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people. I have argued the same thing on HN before, downvotes is a terrible UI design for SO. But they are the design, and here I'm arguing that should be respected.