I posted a question on Stack Overflow and got a down vote.  What I don't understand is the reason for down vote.  Here is my post:    Does random down voting with out a justification help the community at all?
122712
I and my friend used to ask programming questions on Stack Overflow, until we saw that 90% of our questions have at least 1 downvote and nobody cares to explain or at least give a clue why.  For example:        And many more on Super User... (can't see up/down count there)   It seems to me like you're allowing this kind if mingebag-ish behavior on purpose. Is it fun to click on a good question's vote count and see like +5/-3? Does it seem right to you?   It definitely doesn't seem right to me or my friend, who quit this website because of this.  Don't you think this must be stopped, possibly now?  You know, my problem here is that, when a question gets a downvote first (has overall negative reputation), it ceases to get views and thus less chances to get an answer. I came to stack overflow to get answers on my questions, not to have their quality or reason questioned.
14811
I recently noticed (and ) a pattern of systematic downvoting by one user against all my questions and answers.  I have honestly no idea what the user's reasons or motivations are, since we have not interacted at all, barely even crossed path on the site (both answered the same question once), but he is clearly targeting me, not my content (which there is no physical way he could have read entirely during his downvoting sprees). He has not left a single comment on any post to justify his downvotes, nor has he replied to my polite requests to explain himself and/or stop this.  His first wave of downvotes was automatically reversed by the system yesterday, and I would have left it at that... But he has been at it again today, and just seems to have no other activity than downvoting my every contributions, which is getting a bit old, to be honest. This really isn't about the reputation points (which get returned each time by the system anyway), but I think a verbal notice enjoining him to play nicer with the community could go some way...  Because this particular form of abuse only has to do with votes, not post content, I don't think there is any way to flag him within the site (?). Also, because  is still pretty young, it appears we do not have any moderators yet (pro tempore or otherwise)... Would any meta-SO moderators mind taking a look at it?  Edit: somehow missed  when posting mine. Though I do not know what the policy for redundancy is, with support-requests... Please if necessary, feel free to close this question and I'll happily repost over there.
41269
Let me say first that I am fairly new here (about 3 weeks) and absolutely love Stack Overflow. At first I let some of the negative attitudes get to me a little, left a few snarky comments, but that phase has passed. I see the tremendous value for this site in the long run and sincerely do want to help make it a better place.  I find myself going for  the downvote very frequently -- currently about 35% of my votes are downvotes. I even make an extra effort to upvote good content to offset this a bit, so the number should probably be more like 60%. I always try to leave constructive comments and try to help out the confused ones who are really trying.  I truly can't tell if it is just me, or if these folks deserve it. I don't know if you guys noticed, but there are a lot of really bad questions being posted, and a lot of people trying to pass off things like "use jQuery", "use Firebug", and "use Google" as good answers (and getting upvotes!). I even saw someone copy/paste my "What does Firebug say?" comment as an answer and get 3 votes within moments. Sometimes This answer is unclear or not useful just doesn't do it justice.  I feel like some of the people just drive me nuts, but then again I feel this way IRL :) Am I being too harsh, or is it really that bad on SO? Has there recently been a surge of new users, and the quality of content is degrading, or was it like this in the "good old days"? Have I perhaps misunderstood the expected behavior on Stack Overflow -- should I just ignore these crappy questions and answers rather than downvote them?
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.
23802
was recently closed (partly thanks to my own vote to close it.) While it was closed as being "off topic", I'm not sure that's actually the case. The poster asked about resources for understanding the facade and decorator patterns. While it's not a perfect fit for SO (e.g. there was no actual code) the reason I personally voted to close was my disdain for the complete lack of research effort made. (A simple Google search turns up a ton of resources.)  I know that downvoting is intended to mark questions that show little research effort (as pointed out in ) but should be a strong enough reason to close?  I find myself voting to close for this reason relatively frequently, so I suppose my two questions are:   Is this a legitimate reason to vote to close, or should I just be downvoting these questions? If it is a legitimate reason, can it be added to the list of reasons for closure? I don't think it fits comfortably in any of the current reasons.
22187
I read in the FAQs that voting is done to express agreement or disagreement over here:     On Meta Stack Overflow, voting is often used to express agreement or disagreement, not to point out a lack of quality or helpfulness. Please don't be concerned if you receive downvotes – members of the community may simply disagree with your bug, feature request, support issue, or the nature of the discussion.   Then why is there a rep threshold for down vote? The first thing that comes to mind is that if we allow down voting from the start, we may get trollers who would keep down voting stuff. However, there are other ways to deal with it. For example, we could check the activity of the user in the discussion (measure by number of questions/answers/comments and also number of times upvoted (this is different from rep)) before enabling this privilege.  EDIT  Use Case(unfortunately my own):  When I first saw meta, I knew nothing of it and nothing about Area51 and got a lot of down votes for that question. I lost a lot of reputation for a starter that day and was paying for that first timers mistake for some time before I got that reputation back.  EDIT  Please condider the discussion of thread as a feature request. I think there are mainly two suggestions from the various comments:   Remove down-voting all together  OR Change the down-vote reputation threshold to 15(same as up votes)
40164
Before you disagree with me with a downvote, or just want to be funny, please hear me out. From the :  The upvote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Downvoting should be reserved for extreme cases. It's not meant as a substitute for communication and editing.  I have honestly never seen a downvote reserved for an extreme case. The process is usually 1) downvote post if it's bad and don't comment. (Not much of a process, is it?) As you stay on the site longer and longer, you develop a carelessness towards downvotes (as I have), but for new users, it's really discouraging.  question inspired me to [ask balpha to] make , which is a list of users with 1 rep who have the  badge. That's the closest I could get to new users who deleted their own posts after downvotes came in. Don't get me wrong, I know the argument about being nice to new users very well, but I still believe it to be an issue. And since , users are much more inclined to go the lazy route and downvote bad questions. No alternative measures (see below) are taken, for the most part. Personally, I leave a comment and don't downvote until the asker shows no interest in fixing their post. The only other measure taken to discourage downvotes (on answers) is the -1 rep punishment to the downvoter, which is absolutely meaningless and inconsequential anyways. How are we supposed to educate new users when we don't teach them what to do, don't direct them to the FAQ, and discourage them with downvotes right off the bat?  Instead of voting down: If the post is spammy or offensive — flag it. If the question is duplicate or off-topic — flag it for moderator attention. If something is wrong, please leave a comment or edit the post to correct it.  We claim to discourage downvoting, yet I see answers like  that encourage us to downvote first and ask questions later when a question is simply unclear or effortless. It's just an awful chain reaction. A new user comes to the site asking a question, but that doesn't work out too well, so they get downvotes, delete the question in shame, and don't get the help they deserve as a fellow writer of code and programmer. Strip away the quality of the site for a moment: the core functionality of this site, and the only reason I and a lot of other users are (still) on it, is to receive and give help to/from others. I enjoy making sure fellow programmers get the answer they need, because this site has helped me get mine when I needed them. Quality can still be maintained if content is fixed rather than downvoted more often. So can we stop discouraging new users from continuing to use this site and actually start to discourage downvoting? I think we need to encourage effort towards teaching and helping new users understand the system and why their post is bad rather than slapping them in the face with downvotes that they don't know how to interpret anyways. I'm leaving ways we can do this up to others. My first thought was to increase the punishment for downvoting answers and to no longer make question downvotes free, but those wouldn't be well-received, judging by the history of similar suggestions. .
12681
I don't like such kind of questions on Meta, so I will try to make it a good question and describe all with a details.  Today I down-voted  added a comment with explanations why I down-voted it, and flag it as non constructive (my flag was marked as helpful). An hour later  was downvoted, without any comment left about the reason. Yes, that wasn't my best answer, but in my opinion it answers the question. Well, even if somebody considered my answer incorrect he could add the correct answer, or up-vote the competitive ones. I checked the  who made competitve answer, and he didn't get any rep today for that answer.   It was my second down-vote on Stack Overflow, so I was a little bit down, after that. I think who could considered my answer so completely wrong, and that I thought that maybe it was revenge down-vote. So I checked  of the user I down-voted today, and it was clear that he down-voted some answers today. After I checked that that user cast only 19 downvotes in 8 months, so chances were very big that this was revenge down-voting.  I came to this meta, and searched what I should do in this case. I found that most questions about down-votes, were closed as duplicates. After I found , and found that a team member of Stack Exchange suggested to cast a flag for moderator attention, and explain the situation there.  I did that, and create next flag:     I think after I down-voted this question (and a comment about this), the OP down-voted me in revenge; it's clear from his today's reputation and from timing of my down-vote of his question, and time when one of my answers was downvoted. I cannot be 100% sure about that, but if somebody can check this, and point him that it's not the good way to do.   As you can see, I didn't ask for returning any reputation, or banning that user, I just wanted, somebody to point him, that he did wrong. And after I get this respons on my flag: "declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention." So in the end I also lost 10 points of the flag weight.  After describing all situation in details, I want to know were exactly I was wrong here. And what should I do next time something like this happens?
85943
After spending some time on Meta Stack Overflow, I realized the voting system here is . The votes are used for agreement or disagreement toward the question/request and the answer itself instead of quality. However, by downvoting a post, it will also decrease one's reputation at the same time, which will result in a lost of privileges such as downvoting other's post. This behavior of the system seems to tie &quot;how many people agree to you&quot; and &quot;what you can do&quot; together. It is basically saying if many users do not agree to you, you will not be able to express your opinion and disagree with other's idea. I don't see any logical relation between these two. Furthermore, .  Voting up or down does not affect reputation. You are now free to vote purely based on post content, without worrying about how your vote might positively or negatively affect someone’s reputation score.  This makes sense because why on earth would reputation be tied with expressing opinion? Jon Seigel in  offered an &quot;explanation&quot; on why the rep system on meta SO shouldn't be changed:  ... there is a penalty for downvoting, but you get upvoted more here, too, so you have more rep to work with.  This clearly does not explain why downvoting causes a decrease in reputation. In the Stack Exchange system, reputation is an numeric indicator of how trusty and experienced a user is. So does this mean a person with more people agreeing is way more &quot;trusty&quot; than another person with people disagree his questions even though it is a completely good question? Clearly there is something wrong with the system in meta SO, and I believe that it should be modified to remove the rep decrease when voted down, for both voter and poster.
77614
Why do some very simple questions get lots of upvotes while some of the really logical questions get very few upvotes?  On Stack Overflow I have seen dozens of simple questions (whose answers are easily available on the Internet) get many upvotes, while some very logical questions sometimes only get one or two upvotes. What should we do?
78035
There is a lot of irritation and whining from newbies when their suggestions get downvoted because they don't understand that votes have a different meaning here.   This is unnecessary, and I'm absolutely sure is one of the contributing factors why some people turn away from Meta after first contact, and never return.  To fix this, when a user asks their first question here, it should be pointed out in big bold letters that voting follows different rules here than on the mother site.  Something like     Note that voting on Meta.stackoverflow.com works differently from the other Stack Exchange sites. Voting is used as an expression of agreement or disagreement on contributions here, rather than to point out a lack of quality or helpfulness. Do not be too concerned if you receive downvotes - it is possible that members of the community are simply  disagreeing with what your contribution is suggesting.
101675
To what extent I am free with my voting?  And - especially - with downvoting.   I came into argument with another user on the reasons for the voting. So, I decided to ask.  Beside usual awful no-research-effort questions and quick-and-wrong answers, I am often voted down for the answers you would call correct ones:   When I think there shouldn't be answer at all (helping the OP to shoot himself in the foot or feeding a help vampire)  To negate an over-upvoting craze for the silly answer on even more silly question.   So, the question is - what you think on these reasons?   And - bonus question - is there any difference in the policies for the voting up and down?
61021
I'm a member of the community (StackOverflow).  This community is here to discuss that community.  Why, even though I'm a 10k+ user on the real community, am I treated like a second-class citizen here?  It seems kind of cliquey.  I want to volunteer my time to StackOverflow, but not usually through meta discussions.  But when something hinders my ability to work on SO, I want to be able to discuss it here without being stifled.  I also understand that this community has unique considerations from a moderation standpoint.  An SO moderator might not make a good meta.SO moderator.  I suggest we draw a line between permissions that facilitate participation and those that facilitate moderation.  Here are the ones I think primarily facilitate participation:   Leave comments Vote up Flag offensive Edit community wiki posts Vote down Show total up and down vote counts (because it allows you to guage the actual popularity of an opinion).   Allowing anybody to leave comments was a great first step.  My proposal is that the above permissions would either be granted to all people who have the equivalent permission on SO (or even another sister site?) or to all people (i.e. no rep requirement).  Incidentally, since votes in SO often are used to guage the popularity of a suggestion, I don't think there should be penalties for downvoting but that's another, related topic.  It just makes no sense to me that you can have people that have full participation rights on meta.SO even though they have never really participated on SO, meanwhile I'm a very active member on SO and am hindered from talking about it here.  It's like having a town hall meeting but only inviting the people who hang around town hall.    To sum up some of the comments, in reality much of what I'm talking about you already get from account association so I'd be totally satisfied if we lowered the vote down and vote split rep requirements to 100.
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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?
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I have an answer that I'm certain is technically correct. However, it continues to be downvoted. The answer has already been noted in comments on other answers to be better. It goes more in-depth than the others, yet it continues to be downvoted.  The already upvoted answers were nowhere close initially, and I had already commented on them to say why it is wrong...  Isn't there a limit for that? Shouldn't something be catching this?
31183
Am I really forced to ask a question before gaining reputation to vote up answers that I find helpful?  I've used StackOverflow for years in my JavaScript development, and I see myself as a pro. But I always find my questions already been asked and answered, therefore never had the need to ask any questions, but I still want to vote up stuff that I find helpful. But I have not enough reputation to do so.
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The other day I saw an answer which was ok. Not great but not bad. So no reason to upvote or downvote. However the answer already had a single downvote. I felt this was unfair so upvoted the answer to keep it at what I felt was a fair score. It wasn't until afterward that it occurred to me that I should have perhaps solely voted on the content of the answer.  Is this a reasonable reason for an upvote or should I have left the answer alone?