I have read many posts on the pros and cons of the down-vote system. Reputation points have no real value, yet I feel insulted when a question I asked is down-voted. From a personal point of view, I feel as though my input is being rejected by an entire community.   It is hard to describe how it makes me feel when I pose a question that I would want to know the answer to, only to be subjected to hostility. This may not be the intent but it's most definitely the message I receive.    Should I take down-votes personally?
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?
30123
I have a post that I made to share with others my experience of app submission to the iOS App Store. I don't know what I should do except post a question and answer it myself. I don't know how to move it to any other appropriate spot than Questions, and I keep getting down votes, because technically it is not a question. Instead, it's some experience I considered valuable to share with others.  So what I should do about this?    What happened after I post this question here yesterday:  After I post the question here, I drawn some attentions to my original post on Stack overflow,  and got a lot of down votes. I understand that it was not a real question. I mentioned it is not a Q&amp;A and even vote for closing the question myself, however I still got a lot of down votes. Then what happened is the system banned me from asking questions again...  Now I am in the big trouble.
35130
I don't know if I'm being paranoid - but earlier I made a comment on a question that showed no research effort:  . I got a rather snarky reply, and a couple of minutes later I noticed that two of my top questions (which are otherwise on completely different topics) received downvotes within a minute of each other.        It is hard not to suspect a connection between these events, especially in light of the tone of follow-up comments made by the OP (who might not have noticed that I helped improve the answer that was ultimately accepted in the mean time).  Not sure if I am being over sensitive or paranoid; should I just move along? "Spiteful downvote" gets quite a few hits on this site, and maybe I am just too new to be immune to it.  My question(s): "Is there a process to reverse such behavior? Do the comments in the above question merit a flag? Should I shrug an move on?" Any words of advice or encouragement appreciated. Sorry if I sound whiny.  update - the question linked above has been removed "for reasons of moderation". Probably a good outcome. I appreciate all the helpful inputs this generated!  edit This is quite different than the question cited as the duplicate: in that one, a person lost reputation because a user was removed; in this case I suspect an individual user down voted two of my top questions in quick succession "out of spite". The message (shown above) in the rep dashboard was quite different... I request this question be re-opened.
39332
Sometimes my post receives downvotes with no explanation on what I've done wrong. Even worse, sometimes I just get snarky comments! It seems like this is especially bad for new users, who are made to feel unwelcome by veteran users. Stack Exchange's rules can be difficult to grasp, especially for newbies, and downvotes can feel hostile and discouraging. Several ideas have been proposed for how to fix this, including:  Every downvote should be accompanied by a mandatory comment Downvotes should be accompanied by a mandatory, anonymous comment Downvotes should be accompanied by a reason selected from a drop-down menu The first downvote should be accompanied by a mandatory comment Downvotes should cost reputation points unless accompanied by a comment …and other variations.  However, whenever someone suggests one of these changes on Meta, it gets unceremoniously rejected and (ironically) downvoted without a detailed explanation! Why are all of these ideas rejected? Is it because people here are curmudgeonly trolls who just hate people and don't want new users to feel welcome? This question was originally from . While there are many posts related to this issue which get closed as duplicates of , that question doesn't adequately explain to new users why this is always turned down. The purpose of this question is to be the network-wide community-approved FAQ to be used as a duplicate target for questions asking for mandatory feedback on downvotes.
88367
Why not make it mandatory to leave a reason or at least a remark of some sort whenever down voting?  You see more and more often questions being down voted while many times they are simply perfectly legitimate, as questions/as people being unable to achieve some desirable result. I am not talking about "Hey, please do this and that for me, thanks :D " posts.  I would like to know what reasons there are for not making it mandatory to leave a reason for a down vote.
77912
My reputation in StackOverflow is among the top 1% of users. I'm not as active as I used to be, but I still come back to the site from time to time. Unfortunately, I find that when I do return, I get a message "Welcome back, you can upvote!" To be frank, this reminds me of the paperclip on Word 98. I am well aware that I can upvote (or edit comments, or delete posts, or downvote, or undelete posts, or flag, or... pretty much everything)  If reputation could we either get rid of the message entirely or at least get rid of the "you can vote" part of the message?  While I'm at it, I would also appreciate it if a high rep level meant that I could skip the "You've down voted someone! Please add a suggestion to try to make it better." Once again, I am more than aware how the system works, I do not need JavaScript annoying me about it.
110477
There has been a trend now two persons downvote it then it goes on like that. So let there be down voting but do not display the downvotes till the user votes on it. Else the user reads it with an impression that the question is not good.  Am I missing something?
97579
I am sure that many questions are not posted because the user has a fear of downvoters. It is true, because many people give downvotes only because of a small grammar error, or a method of programming that they don't like, or because the user posted a question that has a similar one in another place, even if it asks more information than the another similar question.  But the most important case for that is the new users. Beginner programmers that don't really know how to write good code. The people don't understand that and just downvote and shout out "do not use css inline style on the html!!!" for example.  The question is the prejudice that users sometimes have. Having the option of disabling votes  would mean you will be not traumatized if your question is totally non-sense to other people.
31045
I recently asked a question that got a quick answer that was wrong.   After a few comments with the answerer, he stopped defending his position (because it does not work).  But the answer is still there to mislead others.  So I am left wondering if I should do anything about it or just let the eventual downvoting take its course.
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. .
104363
On main sites downvotes are usually used to show that answer is incorrect. On meta sites downvotes  to express agreement or disagreement.  On main sites downvotes cost reputation so that people downvote only posts that  it as it may give bad feelings to answerer. But it can't be a reason on Meta as it's explicitly said that votes mean another thing here.  So why downvotes cost reputation on Meta?
27715
Now that I've reached 3K on SO, I find myself with the awesome power and responsibility (sic) to vote to close. So I've been thinking about the four possible responses to a poor question:   edit comment downvote vote to close   Oddly, I don't see a lot of use for downvoting.   If I can make something of a question by editing it, I do. If I can't, unless it's a giant stinker, I comment. If the comment doesn't yield an improvement, I ask, 'just how awful is this?' If the question's not answerable close. If it is, well, I suppose I could downvote, but somehow, I feel that the posters of such questions get all the punishment they deserve when they don't get useful answers.  "A Giant Stinker" should mean: qualifies under the stated criteria for a close.  Answers are another story. An answer that is actually incorrect to the best of my knowledge get a swift downvote.  In other words, it seems important to me to give rep feedback to answerers, so that people who post actually incorrect answers fail to accumulate rep and acquire a label of legitimacy. On the flip side, bad questions almost always come from people with so little rep that 'whacking them' with a downvote has no real effect.  There's an interesting question of 'downvoting people' versus 'downvoting things.' As per someone who posted an answer, it is questions and answers that get voted. However, I observe that it is people who gain and lose rep.   Of course, once people reach empyrean rep, downvotes are mere mosquito bites, and we just have to hope that they never turn to the dark side. Even the anticipated larger negative scores on downvotes aren't going to put much of a dent into 44K.  All this adds up to an artifact of the rep system. Downvoting a person with 1 rep sends a message but has no practical effect. Downvoting someone with 1K rep is just the same. The only people who really feel a downvote as a crimp in their ambitions are those who are initially climbing the rep hill.  Does this make sense?
105760
It seems to me that down-voting is the one process in Stack Overflow that is not really subject to review. While many would argue that the current methods for managing down-votes are adequate, I do not feel that they competently ensure a checks-and-balances approach to the use of down-votes. The following arguments summarize why I think the current down-vote policy is not as effective as what reviewing could provide:   There is no real check against down-voting a question regardless of the whether the down-vote was deserved. Any user can down-vote a post without explanation and without assessment.  The -1 penalty for down-voting an answer may provide incentive to not recklessly down-vote, but having a reviewer apply a penalty for a unjust down-vote would seem far more appropriate. Additionally, this would allow answers that are obviously inappropriate to be down-voted without penalty to the reviewer.    While I believe the format of Stack Overflow should not be flippantly changed without due thought, I believe this issue is one of the few areas in which the topic of alternative solutions should at least be addressed. I know reviewing down-votes may be a hefty task (as they happen so frequently) but we certainly have the user base to accomplish such a task. What'cha think?
96515
I have tried posting on Stack Overflow a few times, and I find it somewhat challenging to put together a question that people will like.  It seems a large chunk of people on here have many thousands of reputation points, so I often feel like a fool in comparison. I am a very anxious person and I have a serious fear of being judged by other users, who typically vote my question into the red very quickly, causing me to scramble to change it to meet their comments' requirements. It seems that this fear is part of the mechanism that Stack Overflow uses to get people to write better posts. The problem is, it's taking me some time to get to the point where I can ask good questions. I know I'm going to keep making people mad, until I've got the hang of this, so how do people get over this fear as beginners?
106010
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.
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.
30712
I have always wondered, do SO/SE employees/admins have an ability to see who downvoted them? For example, I can see my own downvoted questions on .  Does this interface look like it does to me, or to everyone else, when logged in as an admin? And if it's not built-in to the interface, do those who are developers ever look it up in the DB?  If not, why are you lying? (that's a joke.)  I ask this because I think anonymous downvotes save us from taking the downvote personally.  Even at our best, sometimes it's human nature if we know the source of criticism, and I don't want anyone to take a downvote that I make personally.  And no, I'm not making any assumptions or guesses as to why one might do this, beyond that desire  to know why they were downvoted.  Simply wondering if it exists.