4 ms·

The problem is that people have different ideas of what a downvote means. To someone who has spent a ton of time answering questions, it means "this is not a w

The problem is that people have different ideas of what a downvote means. To someone who has spent a ton of time answering questions, it means "this is not a well-written question and I do not have the time to explain to the poster why that is; I would rather spend my time on answering well-written questions, which is what I came to this site to do." To a question asker, it means "you suck and I hate your question, and I'm not going to tell you why." The problem is that there are a couple of mechanisms for getting rid of questions - downvoting, or flagging / voting to close. Some questions are clearly on the wrong site - just close them. Some questions are not good questions (screenshots of code, no explanation of desired behavior, no research done into error message) but they are not closeable according to the options provided. The downvote is just to send a message. Answerers who downvote are people who genuinely want to help - they are spending their free time answering questions on the internet for no gain other than extremely localized imaginary internet points. The solution is providing one method of feedback to the question poster, and couching it in a less negative way. Maybe all methods have the asker's feedback get hit, maybe none of them. Maybe the asker should be protected from feedback until they learn the site. Asking technical questions properly is hard. I got downvoted and closed and duplicate questions on my first 5 attempts, and even my recent questions have 0-1 upvotes (my answers fare better, for whatever reason).

BeetleB 7y ago
> Answerers who downvote are people who genuinely want to help - they are spending their free time answering questions on the internet for no gain other than extremely localized imaginary internet points. I think it's more accurate to say that answerers who downvote want to give answers (vs genuinely want to help). Because explaining to someone why their question is problematic is part of helping.
- KKPMW 7y ago
  This is more nuanced. And StackOverflow as a website themselves are part to blame. They cannot seem to make up their mind if they are there to help the people who ask questions, or if their task is to construct a database of problem-answer pairs for future reference, like a type of programming encyclopedia. For the longest time everyone on the site believed it to be the "database" model. And helping individual users with their questions is not part of it. Under this framework answerers who downvote are simply doing what they are expected to do - weeding out poor entries from the encyclopedia. And the person who asks a question has no right to expect an answer, as stated in their 2011 blog entry: > We believe asking questions on our site is a privilege, not a right. [1] However recently they seem to be moving away from that model and only time will tell what it morphs in to. [1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-...
  - jrumbut 7y ago
    I think they've made a lot of progress with the "be nice" thing. A lot of the complaints in this thread I would have heartily agreed with 4-5 years ago, but they seem dated to me now. Maybe it's my perspective that's changed, that's always a possibility. The database model has never seemed right to me, but I do think SO is making progress moving away from it. Ironically, I believe they will be better able to achieve the database goal once they let it be an emergent property of Q&A rather than grudgingly allowing Q&A to get the database.

BeetleB 7y ago

> Answerers who downvote are people who genuinely want to help - they are spending their free time answering questions on the internet for no gain other than extremely localized imaginary internet points. I think it's more accurate to say that answerers who downvote want to give answers (vs genuinely want to help). Because explaining to someone why their question is problematic is part of helping.

KKPMW 7y ago
This is more nuanced. And StackOverflow as a website themselves are part to blame. They cannot seem to make up their mind if they are there to help the people who ask questions, or if their task is to construct a database of problem-answer pairs for future reference, like a type of programming encyclopedia. For the longest time everyone on the site believed it to be the "database" model. And helping individual users with their questions is not part of it. Under this framework answerers who downvote are simply doing what they are expected to do - weeding out poor entries from the encyclopedia. And the person who asks a question has no right to expect an answer, as stated in their 2011 blog entry: > We believe asking questions on our site is a privilege, not a right. [1] However recently they seem to be moving away from that model and only time will tell what it morphs in to. [1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-...
- jrumbut 7y ago
  I think they've made a lot of progress with the "be nice" thing. A lot of the complaints in this thread I would have heartily agreed with 4-5 years ago, but they seem dated to me now. Maybe it's my perspective that's changed, that's always a possibility. The database model has never seemed right to me, but I do think SO is making progress moving away from it. Ironically, I believe they will be better able to achieve the database goal once they let it be an emergent property of Q&A rather than grudgingly allowing Q&A to get the database.