I have enough reputation to upvote but not to downvote. I upvote a post. The post is then edited (or very little time passes). I then change my mind and attempt to downvote it. I am told I cannot due to my low reputation; and my upvote stays in place. I think my upvote should be canceled when I attempt to downvote, since clearly my intention is to no longer upvote.  Update: See  and his own comments thereon: they explain what I meant better than I did.     is similar in wording but requests that every voter need to click twice to switch votes (which I don't agree with). My request applies only to those with the upvote but without the downvote privilege.
101848
It seems that to some users, clicking "downvote" would be the way to cancel their upvote. However, if the user has insufficient rep, they receive an error message. Maybe clicking downvote should cancel an upvote (if available) and require a second click to actually downvote (after all, who is likely to go from a positive to a negative opinion?).  Obviously if there is no upvote set, downvote should immediately downvote.  For example, .
14580
I've found many questions here regarding this 'feature' and many answers explaining how it works, but none showing any 'philosophical' concept behind it. i.e., why is it here? Is it helping to make site better?  For example, just now I made a downvote, retracted it to think a bit more, left a comment with explanation and tried to downvote again. No game. And this is not the only real-life situation when value of this 'feature' is doubtful. There're plenty on this meta.  So, what was the primary reason to introduce it? A flow of people who change all their votes on daily basis?
8903
I've posted a question or an answer, and I have received one or more downvotes. I am not really sure why I was down voted, or I think I know why, but I disagree.  Why did this happen, and what should I do about it?
4817
Recently I downvoted the answer because I thought it didn't answer the question.  Not very uncommon reason to downvote, isn't it?  But then the guy, who asked the question, edited his question and I realized that the answer I downvoted actually answers it and deserves an upvote instead!  But I couldn't do it.  I could do it if the answerer had edited his post.   As I understand, the rationale of changing vote after edit is the following.  If I came to the question page for the first time after the edit of the answer, I would've upvoted it instead of downvoting.  But why doesn't the same rationale hold for the cases when the question is edited?  Unless there's a good reason, I suggest to allow changing answer vote on question edits, not only on answer ones.
11994
Once in a blue moon, I've wanted the ability to downvote my own answer to some question.  ()  Obviously upvoting one's own posts is out of the question.  But down is different.  Voting my own answer down can help me improve the site by pushing my answer lower in the ranking than another answer with a better or more situation-appropriate alternative.  It's not something I'd do often, but I would use this feature if it were available.  If implemented, I'd expect this feature to operate just like downvotes on other user's posts.  That is:   I get a few seconds to undo the downvote;  I get to remove the downvote after an edit to the post;  I lose a point for placing the downvote (CW excepted); I lose two points for receiving the downvote (CW excepted).   If you're noticing that I'd lose 3 points for downvoting my own non-CW post, congratulations! You can add!  I can think of a couple of potential downsides to this change.  The first one may be a dealbreaker; the second is probably not that big a deal.   Strategic downvoting of oneself: since you can undo the vote after an edit, and you can always edit your own posts, someone could downvote themselves soon after posting (especially on a FGITW answer) to garner extra sympathy upvotes. Badge collecting: the Peer Pressure badge just got easier, because if you have a -2 score on an answer, just downvote and delete for an instant badge.
2634
Currently, the system makes you think you can upvote/downvote your own question/answer but then you get notified that you can't. Why have the up/down vote buttons there then?   In general, if some operation is not allowed, then don't put UI for that up or make it disabled so it is apparently disabled - no post operation error panels please?  ps: hope this is not a dupe, but if so, just comment it and I will remove  (+a joke: a user notification panel message: I deleted this file. Is this a problem? Yes/No.)
84998
I'm not a fan of the downvoting feature in general; frankly, I think it should be removed from all of the stackexchange sites.  Negative feedback leads to negative results. I recognize that the intent is not to provide a means of giving negative feedback, but that's what downvoting does. "The community's way of telling peers that their content can be improved" isn't an accurate description of downvoting: people who downvote other people with no explanation as to why (the usual practice) generally consider them not their peers, but their inferiors.   I fear that the downvoting feature panders to the worst aspects of human nature, to an extent that far outweighs any possible benefit that it can provide. I recognize that the intent of downvoting is to make a form of constructive criticism available, but that it fails to do. It simply says "this is bad" without any explanation. If someone really wants to offer constructive criticism, he can do so in the comments, or by closing questions with an explanation of how to bring them up to par. If he does that, it is that that has the value, not a downvote that might or might not go along with it.  I submit that the increasingly negative "elitist" reputation of many of the stackexchange sites (stackoverflow, the "bread and butter" site, in particular) is due more to unexplained downvotes than anything else: downvoting is (much) more often than not a way of telling new people that they aren't welcome in the club. This isn't conducive to growth.  It seems to me that the recently introduced admonishment to "be nice" to new members acknowledges the problem without really doing anything about it. It would be given more teeth if the downvoting feature were removed entirely — people have to give a lot more thought to a comment than a downvote decision. Furthermore, the (apparently many) "serial downvoters" who contribute little if anything else to the site would take themselves elsewhere.   Thoughts? What are the positive contributions (are there any?) that downvoting makes to the stackexchange sites?
1372
Users below 15 reputation can't effectively vote. It says:     Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score   Does it mean that they will take effect after I reach 15 reputation or because they were cast before, they're recorded but ignored?
40331
To me, a downvote usually indicates a problem with an answer. When I downvote it's to mark the answer as having a problem, not the person. If the answer is fixed, I want to remove that downvote - but it's tricky to keep track of all the questions I've looked at over the last few hours.  I don't actually downvote very much, but it's very easy to forget what's going on.  It would be nice to have some way of indicating in an edit that you (the editor/answerer) believe the reason for the downvote has now been resolved, so that the downvoters could come and undo their downvotes or explain why it's still not fixed.  (Note: this isn't about rep-recovery, but quality control. I would feel a lot better about downvoting on "iffy" answers if I felt it was likely that the answer would be fixed and I could undo the vote. Whether or not I'd get back the cost of the downvote is somewhat immaterial.)
77351
On Physics Stack Exchange I have 96 reputation points. I'm able to upvote something, but when I tried downvoting a question it said that my vote would be recorded, but not displayed.  Is there a different amount of reputation points needed to downvote than to upvote?
42487
We've never had an explicit policy around downvoting -- users are free to, if they like, cast all their votes as downvotes. Whether this behavior is desirable or not is another matter.   Now, we do discourage downvoting by making downvotes cost -1 rep to the casting voter. But, there's nothing in our policy that says continual downvoting is bad or wrong or inappropriate.  However, my thoughts on this are changing. I no longer think it is community friendly behavior to cast an extreme number of downvotes, and I am considering an explicit policy forbidding it.  Some data points (as of today):  Total SO upvotes cast: 45,555,530  Total downvotes cast: 365,192  users with more than 100 downvotes cast: 596  users with > 100 downvotes and the lowest ratio of upvotes to downvotes:           |           |         | up:down user id | downvotes | upvotes |  ratio --------+-----------+---------+---------  187712 |       201 |      37 |    0.18    2525 |       580 |     149 |    0.25  136829 |       137 |      43 |    0.31   55943 |       438 |     140 |    0.31   19405 |       236 |      94 |    0.39    5640 |      3299 |    1337 |    0.40  180659 |       126 |      66 |    0.52   78613 |       348 |     198 |    0.56   39892 |       181 |     109 |    0.60     432 |       310 |     197 |    0.63  238704 |       198 |     132 |    0.66   12643 |       170 |     116 |    0.68   18256 |       219 |     152 |    0.69  122428 |       167 |     118 |    0.70  118854 |       120 |      86 |    0.71  105662 |       273 |     201 |    0.73  187690 |       135 |     101 |    0.74    1782 |       573 |     430 |    0.75   (this is a complete list, there are no more below this threshold.)  Based on this data I am leaning towards enforcing a "no more downvotes may be cast" if    You have at least (n) votes cast total Your upvote to downvote ratio is lower than ~ 0.5
102586
It is often said that voting on Meta means something different than voting on regular sites. Upvotes mean "I agree", and downvotes mean "I disagree".  However, I submit that this is not the case. Downvoting of a question has one effect in particular: censorship.  Once a question reaches -8 votes, it disappears from the front page. It can still be found; it isn't deleted. But all it takes is a net 8 downvotes for a question to be more or less lost without a direct link.  You might say that a net 8 downvotes obviously means that the community doesn't agree or want that. Well... does it? Particularly on polarizing issues, a question can temporarily get -8 votes as different people come online and see it. Maybe certain people with a certain belief all see it at once and downvote it a lot.  The front page is how most people find stuff they want to talk about, vote on, or answer. Removal from the front page means that most people will not find it without being pointed directly to it. Once a question hits -8, it is unlikely to be upvoted again. Edits will be irrelevant, new answers won't matter. The question is basically exiled.  The problem is that, on polarized topics, fast mass downvoting can quash any idea that is not popular with the most active members. After all, the most active members are the ones who are most likely to be online and see it. If a bunch of MSO regulars see it and downvote it, it goes away. Someone who checks MSO maybe once a day is less likely to be able to catch the question before it is exiled. This gives undue power to members who are most active on MSO, simply because they have more free time to spend on MSO.  I think this is a significant problem for polarized topics. It becomes very difficult to adequately discuss something that a significant number of active members dislike, even if the community at large doesn't mind.  Consider . It currently stands at +9/-8. Initially, in the first few hours, the question was heavily downvoted and even closed. However, after a day, it was upvoted and reopened.  This shows that a question can initially have a negative response, but later get a positive one. And you can check; any edits I did to the question were relatively minor. The question posted as is was initially negative, but ultimately positive.   If that -8 happened to all come first, odds are good that the +9 and the reopen would never have happened. Those 9 people would never have had the chance to weigh in on the subject. And that's wrong.  It is wrong for someone's potential vote to not matter just because they don't visit MSO multiple times in a day. It is wrong for someone's potential vote to not matter just because they have a different sleep schedule from many of MSO's members.  The problem is one of timing. Heavy dislike from active members who quickly see the question and downvote it can kill a question before someone who might upvote it ever even sees it.  I suppose the best suggestion would be to either lower the -8 threshold (or remove it altogether) or keep it from kicking in until 1-2 days has passed. If the question isn't active, it'll already be off the front page. And if it is active, then enough people will have seen it to know if the threshold represents a real consensus or just the fast-acting few.
1056
Note: If you're looking for a simple explanation as to why comments aren't required on downvotes, see .   I used to get "upset" (though that is too strong a term) when I got downvoted without comment. If my answer isn't good enough then I'd like to know why. Not only does it improve the answer for the OP but it improves my knowledge too.  Where the down-vote has been explained I've found it useful &amp; it has improved my answer, or forced me to delete the answer if it was totally wrong.  So is there any way we can encourage people to leave a comment? Perhaps they don't lose rep if they explain their down-vote?  I must admit though that I haven't always explained my down-vote either so you could call me a hypocrite. I've also grown a thicker skin over the months of using SO (it seems to have come with the higher rep score ;-)), so I'm less bothered about this now.
124075
Possible Duplicate:          Is down-voting on SO supposed to be anonymous? I ask because it does not seem to me to be.  Example:   I asked a question today. I got 3 good and 1 mediocre responses. I voted up the two that helped me and accepted the one that worked best. A while later, several new comments from one person appeared, to which I responded (since they were questions for me), and then that same person posted a new answer. This answer was crap. The person missed the whole point of the question and gave vague "pseudo-code" (and calling it that is generous) that basically restated my question.   Though I try to use down votes sparingly, especially when someone takes the time to answer a question I asked, I really want to down vote his answer. However, if I do, then my "reputation" will report "-1 downvoted" today. Since we've been going back and forth in the comments (in my failed attempt to explain the question to him), it's fairly likely that he'll peg me for the down vote.   In rumaging through the his reputation, I noticed that he gets down voted a lot. Moreover, he often votes down things on the same day as he gets down voted. Looking at a few recent questions where he posted an answer that was down voted, it's pretty clear that he (often successfully) down votes questions or competing answers when he is down voted, perhaps based on comments or, as is easier, based on profiles where down votes are recorded.  In this particular case, it's worth it for me to down vote him because (1) it's a stupid answer, (2) I don't live and die by my SO reputation, and (3) it really wasn't a great question that I asked. However, this does bring up the larger point that perhaps a date should not be associated with a down vote.
37644
I've just noticed that if you try to vote without having a privilege to vote, you're greeted with such message:        So, that's interesting. Does it mean that if I gain 125 (or 15, in case I'm upvoting not having 15 reps) rep on that site, my "suggested" vote goes public and until then it would be recorded as it's done with anon feedback?  And until this change, the votes weren't recorded as anonymous, or has the new message saying that it acts as feedback been added just to not upset users?
86511
Possible Duplicates:        As Dan Dyer mentioned in his comment on , there is a conflict of interest when you have posted your own answer and are allowed to downvote other answers.  Despite the vote editing window being drastically reduced, the fundamental problem remains: I can downvote the other answers permanently and still benefit - my answer gets upvoted ONCE and wham, I have just made up the rep loss for my 10 other downvotes. The vote editing window fixes part of the problem, but there is a more complete fix that has the extra benefit of not preventing legitimate vote changes: to disallow downvotes on competing answers when you have posted one yourself.  The temptation to wrongfully downvote competing answers is huge. The rep loss is tiny in comparison. It has to be in order for people to continue to legitimately downvote.  Details:   If I have previously voted and then post my own answers, delete my downvotes. Continue to allow me to remove the upvotes - I think this is fully legitimate. If I delete my answer it's probably best to continue to deny downvotes (perhaps even including the question), but I don't have a strong opinion either way.
97269
If I'm below 15 reputation, I can't alter the public score of an answer/question.  Suppose I gain the privilege by getting the required rep and vote some posts up. Then, for any reason, I fall below 15 and lose the ability to vote. What about the votes I already did cast?  Do post scores get altered by ignoring my vote, or will they stay the same? In other words, is losing a privilege retroactive?  If yes, what about when I gain my privilege back? Are my votes automatically restored, or do I have to cast them again from scratch?  I made the easiest example, but this applies to any higher privilege