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Agreed. Down voting is toxic. Though, rather than costing points, I'd prefer to see the voter required to explain why they are down voting. As small as it is,
by jerrac 7y ago
Agreed. Down voting is toxic. Though, rather than costing points, I'd prefer to see the voter required to explain why they are down voting.
As small as it is, a down vote is a public action saying that the person posting what you are voting on has less value. At least that what they said has less value. That is never a fun experience, even if you have very thick skin.
- gwbas1c 7y agoI always explain why I downvote, unless there already is a clear explanation. Why do I downvote? I downvote when an answer is wrong or outdated. That's the point of downvotes, to push incorrect or outdated answers to the bottom.
- jerrac 7y agoGood. I'm glad you explain. That doesn't make it any less of a public reprimand. In polite society, when you reprimand someone publicly, you only do so when private discussions have failed. I'd also argue using down votes for outdated information is very inefficient. Wouldn't it make sense to just have a "this is out dated" flag, and list how many people have used it? Then, the author of the answer could update their post and ask that the flag be cleared. For wrong answers, I'd say a comment "this is wrong because" first, then something other than down voting.
- dkersten 7y ago> I'd say a comment "this is wrong because" first, then something other than down voting. I guess its just as much a signal to people looking for an answer as it is for the person who wrote the answer. At least with a downvoted answer, its easy to see "ok, maybe not this one" and you can check the comments to see why. Not that I'm a fan of downvoting, I think a flagging system would achieve the same thing while being more helpful to all involved than an opaque downvote.
- papln 7y agoSO is a crowd-sourced FAQ, not a conversation forum.
- dkersten 7y agoI think downvoting answers is slightly less problematic than downvoting questions, although both suffer from the same issue if people don't explain why they did it. At least if an answer is downvited, its easy to assume "this is wrong", while if its a question its.. hard to know why unless explained.
- gwbas1c 7y agoDepends on if the question is easily googled or a general dupe. I don't know about you, but I find when I'm on a poorly-moderated forum, it's just the same questions asked over and over again every day. Do you really need to explain Search to every noob who you downvote? (Note that I never look at new Stackoverflow questions. I always find the site through Google, because someone's always asked the question first. I do improve answers when needed.)