I've gone through the following questions:   From those posts, I learned that, when my question/answer gets too many downvotes or deleted, I'll be banned from Q&amp;A. To lift the ban, I have to earn more reputation by creating or editing a question or answer to attract upvotes. However, it is unclear to me that:  Will asking questions which are neither downvoted nor upvoted make me banned? Will upvoting too many answers make me banned? Will accepting answers increase my rep and then help to get unblocked? Or, will getting upvoted comments (no rep increase) help me get out of the ban?  I am asking because, a few days ago, I upvoted a few of the answers I got and later I find my upvotes are reversed. I upvoted again and then get reversed again and again. Then my account is banned. PS: I think this site must fully disclose its banning mechanism. I never learn about it until I got banned. For downvoters: please let me know what I did wrong; it is much appreciated.  Ok, now I realized that upvoting has nothing to do with a question ban (this is the ban I got). I'll now work on my previous questions. One likely reason of getting instant voting reversal is probably the Internet/Wi-Fi/data instability.
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If you are reading this, you may have been affected by one of our post quality bans. If so, it is important that you  to understand what has happened and how to regain the permissions that you lost. While trying to ask a question, one could see:  We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See  to learn more.  Likewise, for answers:  We are no longer accepting answers from this account. See  to learn more.   Why am I getting this message? Are deleted posts taken into account too? Is a question/answer ban the same as a suspension? How do I avoid getting a question ban? How long do I have to wait before I can post again? What can I do to release the ban? How can I reactivate my account? Can I simply create a new account? I'll just ask somewhere else on the SE network, and they'll migrate my question to the correct site! Will a ban on one Stack Exchange site affect my standing on other sites in the network? Does this apply to meta sites too? My account is in good standing. Why am I still blocked?
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Downvoting legitimate questions on Meta because one disagrees with the question's premise has become a bit of a problem.     Question bans on users asking legitimate questions are a real possibility. Discussion can be suppressed.  Heavily downvoted questions fall off the front page, and no longer have any visibility.   If you disagree with the question or its premise, why not:   Vote on the question based on its clarity and usefulness.  That's how we do it on every other SE site. Express your disagreement in an answer explaining why you disagree, and allow your opinion to be voted/vetted by the community on its own merit.   You can still vote down questions that:   Do not demonstrate minimal research effort (close as duplicate of FAQ questions), or Are merely rants, or otherwise not constructive.   Feature requests are an exception.  Note recent change in :     Unlike normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta invites the community to   discuss, debate and propose changes to the way the community itself   behaves, as well as how the software itself works. On posts tagged   feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the   proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post   itself.
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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.
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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.
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I just got rid of a question ban, after doing some stupid stuff when I just got on meta. I asked a question which got closed because it was a dupe of a whole lot of other questions. After that, I posted a suggestion, which had 1 upvote, and four downvotes. That was all my activity on meta.  After posting some constructive answers here again, I regained the right to ask questions. Although I know that I'm risking to get downvoted into oblivion again, I'd like to suggest an 'agree/disagree' button. This time, I have searched meta, and was not able to find any suggestion like this.  When I had been banned, I was looking at a lot of questions discussing penalties and meanings of downvotes on meta; Some say that a downvote has an ambiguous meaning, they can mean either that your question is low quality, or that people disagree with it. Some say that it is just unclear what it means. To clean this meaning up, I'm suggesting these buttons. They could be a thumbs up and a thumbs down buton or something, to distinguish between  agreement and question quality.  Disagreement would only remove 1 rep from the asker, and would be free for the downvoter, while downvotes remove 2 rep, or as suggested in other feature requests, 5 or 10.  The only problem I can see, is that this goes against the 'don't make me think' rule in UI design. Users now need to learn even more, because they need to know the difference between those icons.  Another way this could be implemented, is by changing the influence of votes based on the ,  and  tags.
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On Stack Overflow, I have a suspension period of 7 days which ends today. But my actual reputation has not been returned to me as one of the moderators said it would. I have a message like this by @Andrew Barber:     Once your suspension period is over, you will be returned to your   correct reputation level, minus the votes from the accounts which have   been deleted. At that time, you are more than welcome to return, and   continue contributing your knowledge, and gaining legitimate   reputation points. Just please keep our rules in mind when you do.      Regards      Andrew Barber, Stack Overflow moderator   Can any moderator here help me or tell me what the rules are of getting back my reputation?  How can I get the attention of a moderator so that they can resolve my problem?
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Recently I got nine downvotes for one of my questions which I think is OK to be asked in Stack&nbsp;Overflow:    The question is on hold, and it got downvoted even after being on hold.  Is there a way that I can delete that question or should it be removed from Stack Overflow?  Note:   It's quite embarrassing for ones` profile to have a question with 9 downvotes. :( I learnt the lesson. I'll improve my future questions. :/   Update:  One of the  of a similar question states:     Once you get eight downvotes, you pretty much disappear (edits won't bounce you to the front page).   I'm not sure how true this statement is. But if it is true, even if I edit my question, it won't show up to the front page so no one will see the edit and no one will upvote and the question will always have downvotes.
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I have been on Stack Overflow for some time.  It is an AMAZING resource and don't know if I would've got through the past 18 months without it.  I love it!  Problem is that I have "1" reputation.  All of my questions have already been asked and answered.  My "new user restrictions" mean: - I can't vote up answers that were helpful. - I can't comment on answers.  I sometimes have a question to ask one of the users that answered someone else's question but I can't.  This is hard!  How do I get a break?  Do I have to troll for a couple of days/weeks/months to answer enough questions in the hope someone votes some of them up just so I can do some basic functions?  Perhaps the number of site visits and length of membership could count for something?
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I know that there are various reasons for rep dropping suddenly.  What I am asking is, can the reason be recorded permanently in your reputation change history, even if - for example - an upvote was reversed. If people are trying to improve and track reputation to see what things work and what things get a negative response, losing points without knowing why isn't helpful.   If you downvote something, that negative change to your rep gets recorded - can withdrawn / reversed / otherwise cancelled changes also be recorded, please? I would just like to understand what happened when it does happen.  This was triggered by me suddenly losing 15 pts - I assume an accepted answer of mine was withdrawn or possibly reversed - but for what question?
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I recently got automatically flag-banned on my Worldbuilding account. When I regained the ability to flag, I flagged another post that I had intended to flag but been unable to because of the ban. That flag was within 24 hours of the ban being lifted, probably within the hour because I was on the site at the time and happened to notice. The flag was accepted as helpful, but the system promptly banned me once again. Now that the ban has once again ended, I am hesitant to flag anything. Will I get banned once again? If so, how long do I have to wait?  I don't have anything specific in mind to flag, but it would help to know whether to leave anything I see as needing flagging to someone else so that I don't get banned again. Getting banned would be a lot less helpful than skipping one post and being able to flag more than one post later on.  The majority of my flags have been helpful, with almost all of the declined ones for off-topic or moderator attention. I do not try to spam the review queues and my flags are well intentioned and usually helpful. I am fairly sure that both bans were because of the system because I flagged more posts than normal in a short amount of time.  Here is a screenshot of my recent flag history. This is not a complete list. To the right, you will see my flag count: 13 post flags, 8 helpful, 5 declined; 3 comment flags, all 3 helpful.    Recently declined flags:
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I have first downvoted an answer. Then, I decided to leave it the way it was before, meaning to undo my downvote just like it never existed, so I upvote to remove my downvote. Suprise! SO seems to consider it as two upvotes!  Let's say I have an answer with -3, then I decide to downvote it making it -4. After deeper thoughts, I prefer to remove my downvote to let it the way it was before I downvoted, meaning -3, but SO makes it -2 automatically!     Wouldn't it be supposed -3, and not -2? If someone else would have upvoted, it would have made it an upvote +1, not a +2!   Am I missing something here?  In fact, is there a way to tell SO that I only wish to undo my downvote, and not upvote the answer? I may understand why it does behave this way. I only wish to undo my downvote, though.
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In seeing some of the potential solutions and problems related to this  I noticed something. Why are closed questions allowed to obtain more reputation for a user?   So my recommendation(even though it's a pain to implement probably) is this(note, this includes all close votes except for migrations)   When a question gets closed, only the question gets retroactively marked as community wiki. By retroactive, I mean all upvotes on the question before closing are undone.  Also note, downvotes are kept. This means a closed question with downvotes will always have a net negative reputation.  When a question is reopened, it gets retroactively assigned to the user instead of the community user. This just undoes point #1.   Details:  Point one solves these problems:   User asks a popular, but "bikeshed" subjective question. Even if the question is closed an hour later, they may accumulate 15 upvotes. With this system, those 15 upvotes won't matter. Downvotes are kept to the user while being closed. This deals with low-quality questions that people should get a negative reputation affect for. However, after being closed downvotes should be assigned to the community user to prevent the downward spiral affect, especially since pitty upvotes won't be able to save them. People can still upvote as a method of suggesting that a question should be reopened. The upvote just won't count for the author of the question until reopened.   I see no actual point in closed questions being capable of acquiring reputation, except for maybe duplicates(but only barely).  So, here is my feature-request. :)  Also, to solve the  you could apply the same thing toward the answers of closed questions. This isn't a big problem with any close reasons other than Not A Real Question, where many low quality answers fall but with users who try to answer them anyway with the small amount of information given. I think those users should not be discredited for their attempts.
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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?
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I have found that if I upvote an answer, it gets upvoted, but if I downvote I receive a message that the vote is hidden until I have sufficient reputation points.  Here's an example from an answer on  - on which I have .  If I upvote:    It simply gets upvoted - isn't that nice!  The trouble is if I downvote an answer, I get a message saying my vote is hidden until I have 125 reputation points:    And here is an example of a question on , on which I have :      So either this is a straightforward network-wide bug, or this is a Stack Exchange policy to hide downvotes from users with less than 125 reputation points - in which case perhaps the wording of the message is ambiguous?
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If you are the OP, could you not request for a downvote to be reviewed by some moderators so that you are not the one who gets wrongfully blocked from asking questions, but him/her for downvoting unreasonably?  That you could appeal against anything you feel is unjust to you - like in real life - would be great. If you do it right, you won't have to fear getting blocked from asking questions any more. Creating new accounts just to be able to keep asking questions is getting tiresome.
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Answers and questions allow both upvoting and downvoting - comments, however, only allow upvoting.  I think it would be useful to allow downvoting of comments for two reasons:   First, if you accidentally upvoted a comment you didn't intend to Second, if you strongly believe that a comment is , misleading, incorrect or off topic
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As a new user, I find it impossible to contribute to the community or to even begin contributing. I know why the reputation system is in place and I respect it, but at the same time it is too hard on new users.  It started with me wanting to upvote a question...     "Vote Up requires 15 reputation"   Just to appreciate a good question that helped me I need 15 rep? OK..., so I find out how I can get reputation points. More or less, I need to ask a question for +5 and add an answer for +10. I don't have any questions at the moment and I don't want to spam a random question, but I did happen to have a slightly different answer to the earlier question that I wanted to upvote. So I try to answer...     This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.   Now... I know this doesn't apply to every question, but at the same time, this means I'm forced to answer yet another question, and I don't want to go around looking for random questions and spam irrelevant answers...  Now I'm stuck. So I try to talk to some other users in the chat rooms about how to go about getting reputation points and how they first started. I entered into a "casual chat room".     You must have 20 reputation on Meta Stack Overflow to talk here.   Yes... I can understand why this is enforced, because we don't want new users to spam chat rooms, but all I wanted to do was ask for help. So I can't even talk to anyone about my newbie problems. So okay, I'll just settle for upvoting comments in the question that helped me. I don't see an upvote hover-over button so I can't even do that.    So now I'm stuck at 1 reputation point, unable to cross that 15 rep barrier, and even after posting this question I'll only have 6 rep points and still unable to do anything, and I'll be forced to look for questions to answer. Yes, I should be contributing to the community, but I shouldn't need to begin answering or making questions to upvote questions and answers. This only spurs more spam/irrelevant answers if anything.   Very, very, very new-user unfriendly.