Is it just me, or is there a general non-constructive attitude, rather than constructive criticism on Stack Overflow?   I am having difficulty aligning my internal compass. I understand that certain questions need to be thrown out, and I understand that certain questions are fitting for certain Stack Exchange sites. I understand that the sites ore community moderated, and that a general "average" of community members' persona's will be reflected.   My issue is with the fact that, in my opinion, some users are a bit trigger happy with the down vote button, or are just downright rude, without providing any feedback to the user in question.   This is in my opinion much more non-constructive to the site than a Q that is slightly off topic, or not worded correctly. When did the down vote become a feel good weapon? I see this regularly where questions not deserving of down votes (in my opinion), get down voted by a what seems like a factor, because a trigger happy user down voted the Q, rather than tried to fix it. And now a bunch of users exercise their down vote button, because someone else did, and they can also do it.  I know we cant possibly moderate each down vote before it is applied, and I understand an "average" will be the outcome, but it seems like the good guys, interested in actually contributing in a constructive manner, are outweighed by the, in my opinion, non constructive guys. Its almost like the perceived anonymity of down voting, is being exploited.   I attempted to flag one such post, and the moderator replied with (We can't say why people vote the way they do). I understand that the community moderation is the power of these sites. But is it being abused?  Situations are created where legitimate questions, that may have been genuinely helpful to other users, are being "played" with by people exercising their privileges instead of their contribution.  (Again, the above all in my personal opinion)  From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that this behavior is demoralizing, to say the least.   I am personally trying hard to contribute. Not for rep, but to give something back as SO has really been helpful to me on multiple occasions.  An example, but not specifically aimed at for the above, is provided in the link below this post.  The original question, although broad, could be answered or "nudged in the right direction" in my personal opinion.   The original question was aggressively acted upon, which I understand needs to happen in some cases. In this case, I feel the original poster, instead of being chased away with a broom, could have been pointed or helped, even if not on SO.  I indicated in a comment that this might have to be moved to a different site, like programming, if its not fitting for SO. I attempted to use the community wiki option, and created a new Q&amp;A, which I thought would go to the wiki, and not as a new question. I again, indicated that SO might not be the right place, and that I was making an "attempt" to contribute.  Instead of constructive behavior, I experienced more non constructive criticism, than what I would care for when trying to contribute.  As I said, maybe its just me. I guess my question revolves around determining if its just me seeing things.   (10k only)
15007
There is a distinct decline in the level of civility on all the sites here.  Some of this is due to new users coming in and posting spam and other nonsense, but the off-topic and downvote buttons are doing a pretty good job of keeping this under control. Unfortunately, a lot of this is coming from more experienced users, and the site's built-in moderation system does not (and probably cannot) handle this very well.  Folks are rushing to pound new users down with &quot;this belongs on meta!&quot;, &quot;this is off topic&quot;, &quot;this is a duplicate!&quot; and &quot;read the Help!&quot;. (Which is correct, but should be done nicer) All this, of course, is accompanied by a flurry of downvotes.  This is not very welcoming to new users who don't know about meta, the Help, or what counts as off-topic. Now I am not proposing that we just allow off-topic, meta, or duplicate questions.  However, I think we could be gentler in the way we express these sorts of things.  Explain what meta and the FAQ are and provide useful links.  Just using please and thank-you when asking folks to read the FAQ or post something on meta would be an improvement.  I also think we could rein in the downvoting a bit.  Not that we shouldn't vote stuff down, but unless a new user's post is clearly spam, voting it down to -1 or -2 should be sufficient to send a message without piling on. I like Stack Exchange and I want it to become a resource for everyone, not just an elitist site for high-rep users on the sites.
26093
While at least some answers from every question seem to have been up-voted as a "helpful" answer:   about 49% of questions have score of 0 or 1. another 21% of questions have a score of 2.   Most questions seem to have an answer or two with score +5. Is it that we have a lot of fluff questions and not useful ones? Or perhaps it just seems more natural to vote for answers than questions? If we want the most useful info on Stack Overflow to filter to the top, how can this disparity be fixed?  I think this may cause real problems for people getting the badges which require +25 or +100 votes on questions.    I like a lot of the feedback I'm seeing. Two problems are highlighted:   The work flow doesn't promote voting for questions the way it promotes voting for answers. One solution: when a user answers a question, the system should invite them to vote for the question.  If someone cares enough to answer a question, then they care enough to vote for it as well. Users with less than 15 reputation cannot vote for questions or answers. Is this warranted?  Maybe these users could provisionally vote for questions and answers and those ratings would only take effect when the user reaches 15 reputation?   All I ask is this. As you browse Stack Overflow, when you see a good question: vote for it.  If everyone does, then this problem will disappear.
80725
I have posted different suggestions in the recent days, that many users didn't like. Although some are common practice in other forums, and some even if you don't agree are true (ie, new users get "bullied" by higher rep users many times).  I see that if users with a different way of seeing things, come and ask something here, and it gets downvoted, how is this different way of seeing things will ever affect this forum? I have been downvoted so much, I have each time less "voice" in here. I am not sure even if you can run risk of being banned here.  SO is a highly developed site, many things already implemented, it is hard to suggest something that everyone that has been here for long while will agree, something ground breaking. I suggested things that I as a responsible SO user, but with low reputation, I haven't asked many questions.  I think people on SO should be nicer to new users, I am not saying to allow them do whatever they want. Just be nicer.  So what should I do —    Quit in my attempt to participate in Meta because I will continue being downvoted?  just never propose any new idea, try to harvest Reputation by posting bugs, trying to answer things that are not too controversial so I don't get downvoted? Then when I finally have tons of reputation I can go and shutdown the reputation of new users that suggest new Ideas.   I think it is fine not to agree with me. But why do I lose reputation on meta because of a question that is proposing something new? If most people deem something not good for SO, well my question was useful. I mean my very downvoted ideas got attention, it was a useful discussion. The result was "we don't want that here", but it was useful, in the future other people won't need to ask the same. So is it really right to lose reputation because of that?  Edit:  I am adding this, because I think that by putting myself as example my point was a bit lost.  The FAQ says:     Are upvotes and downvotes different on meta?      Voting here works a bit differently from other Stack Exchange sites.   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.   Some people in the comments have stated they don't even look at the reputation because of this very reason, which totally makes sense. But basically it means they are ignoring a part of the website's functionality, because it is not useful for that.  So does it make sense to lose reputation for something that people doesn't seem to consider?  I mean it is not the same to be downvoted on SO for posting "nonsense" and to be downvoted here for posting something others don't agree with. And I am not even talking about me, I am sure this has happened to everyone.  If it worried me that I am losing reputation, as it is I would have deleted the posts that are making me lose reputation. That is not my point.
7455
OK, I know this has been discussed before ,   but I'd like to make a new suggestion.  Problem: drive-by downvoting - people downvote without explaining why. And when you downvote, legitimately, you lose rep, as does the questioner / answerer. This strikes me as being a lose / lose situation.  Previous solutions: e.g.  and  have required forcing comments.  Solution: How about this instead: keep the current system (downvoter loses rep) unless the downvoter adds a comment in which case no rep is lost. I think this is win/win. The downvoter can choose to enter comments but is encouraged to do so, which increases the feedback to the original questioner / answerer.
97796
Has anyone noticed any tactical downvoting of their, or other people, answers?  For example, in a recent answer to a question, my answer described a possible solution.  Shortly afterwards, another answer appeared following the solution I had mentioned.    I know that this is completely in the spirit of the site, however my answer had been down voted even though it was still as valid as it ever was.  Another poster also had his equally valid solution down voted.  There is no way of knowing the reason behind the down voting, as no comments were left, but I am suspicious as to the ethics behind down voting someone else's valid answer in the hope of making their own answer more prominent.  Are people really that desperate to gain reputation?  I have seen comments in other posts that suggest that tactical downvoting has occurred.  So, does anyone think that it is acceptable to downvote another post, even though it is still correct but may not provide a complete answer, to make their own appear more favourably?
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?
43868
I understand the purpose of up/downvoting answers -- some answers are better than others, some answers may be wrong, .etc.  With regard to questions, though, there are other mechanisms to deal with "bad" questions:  comments, close, flag.  A poorly written question should be improved.  A bad question should be closed/deleted.  Often, though I see poorly written questions downvoted. I'm not sure what this accomplishes.  I get loss of rep for offensive or spam questions, but for an off-topic question?  or one that is just poorly written?   Why?  It seems to me that rep ought to be based more on answers on a site of this type.   Fundamentally, it seems that rep ought to be based on what you add to the site, not what you ask of it.  A particularly good question does add to the site, but a poor question doesn't really detract from it in the same way that a bad (wrong) answer does. Sure, go ahead and give people more rep for asking a particularly good question, but why punish people for asking bad questions when there are other ways of handling that.  Why not handle questions more like comments and allow upvotes, but not downvotes?  It seems to me that many, if not most, of the downvoted questions are first timers.  It's more likely that your first introduction to the site will be in asking a question, rather than answering. There is a significant risk to alienating new users when their questions are downvoted -- there's a visceral response to seeing that negative number next to your question.  Why not let the close/flag system weed out questions that don't belong and the comment system work to improve poorly worded questions.
49193
I use the Stack Exchange sites very often to find solutions to problems and help me with decision-making.  In some sites I have asked question and received answers, and I have more than 15 reputation. On Stack Overflow I have always found answers to my questions and never needed to post a question (avoiding duplicate questions). However, I would like to vote for the answers that helped me but I do not have the ability to do that, due to low reputation.  Posting a question or answering an answer on each site seems like the only way to get enough reputation.  Since I have no input to give in these areas unless they will be counted as duplications, many answers that I have already used are missing my vote.  I suggest to take into account all of the reputations from all Stack Exchange sites for voting, or thinking about a different way to allow votes.
46739
I have been regularly coming across a new user recently; let's call "him" Bob?  Bob is absolutely convinced of his correctness on every topic. So convinced that he answers questions using completely invalid syntax because he knows how to solve a similar problem.  Commenting on the answer and pointing out the flaws sometimes results in a constructive response but more regularly not. Any downvotes (I haven't) normally results in a semi-unconstructive comment about '"experts"' or a small lecture on how people shouldn't downvote answers where someone was trying to help and that people should learn some manners.  So far, this has degenerated once, with a different user, and the community expressed themselves by downvoting more than usual.  I obviously don't know the particulars of the banning algorithm but it seems unlikely that Bob will be answer banned. He currently has 73 answers, 6 with a positive score and 6 with a negative. Five have been accepted, one an answer with positive score, which means only 10 of Bob's answers have been considered "helpful". People seem to be more wary of downvoting answers than questions, so Bob has escaped the worst. A significant minority of answers I would normally downvote as they're just wrong, but I can't and won't do that.  I am becoming extremely wary of commenting that Bob's answers are incorrect as I can't be bothered to have an argument over it. When combined with the volume of incorrect answers this is detrimental to the site. If wrong answers keep getting posted that people are unwilling to downvote or comment that they are incorrect then they stay around. I can't flag the answers as  they're just technical inaccuracies.  Is there anything that an ordinary user can/should do in this situation? Bob is obviously acting in good faith and I don't think that he should be punished for doing so.  I am deliberately not posting Bob's identity as I'd rather Bob wasn't picked on.
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. .
90119
I am not sure if this comment about a suggestion on stackoverflow should be written here, but I do think so.   I would recommend, if this is possible, when downvoting a question, to be mandatory for the downvoter, to write the reason why he/she downvoted. I think this should be much more helpful for the OP to understand better what he did wrong, in order to fix it, if he does not want to get more downvotes. Downvoting itself, does not help the OP much, nor the people that might have a similar programming problem.  Please write what do you think guys. I know that most of you will disagree with me, but I find that giving feedback when downvoting is more useful for all of us.
39857
A frequent argument brought up in support of voting anonymity is that it can lead to potential grudges. Certainly the review system is of the same nature.  I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that voting is anonymous and reviewing is not. Either both should be public--and this would be fine since public reviewing has been successful--or both should be anonymous--and I assume this would be the desired option since this community holds anonymity so dear.  One could say that voting rates the posts, the actual meat of the site, while reviewing is based on clarifying the purpose of the site and cleaning it up.   answer makes the point that the community can trust that votes are a good measure of quality for the very reason that they do not know who cast them; the mentality that a high-ranking member may have supported something could blur the line between "science" and "politics/religion."  Reviewing, then, can be seen as a judgment of specific members rather than quality of edit/questions, which seems to fall precisely under the "politics/religion" umbrella--the review system is much more vulnerable to grudges due to this.  So let's discuss the differences and the implications of these disjointed anonymity policies.
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?
87691
Is there a Stack Exchange site where users post their questions not to get answers or to get up voted or down voted for quality, but to decide on which site to post their questions? If not, does anybody else think that a site like this should be created? Up votes and down votes could be allotted for how obvious the correct site to post to is. For example, a question that obviously asks about why their code is broken would be sent to SO possibly with down votes. However, a question that spans both programming and academia where it is unclear which subject is dominant, could get up votes for its complexity and deserving to be asked.   Is helping to decide where questions go a function of Meta Stack Exchange or should another site be created?  Are there any negatives to creating a site like this?
102704
This question is a great example of why Stack Overflow is getting a reputation for being a hostile environment these days         This is clearly a developer used to C# who is trying to apply existing concepts to C++ and failing. You can see from his comments that he has been googling for an answer all day, has no coworker who can help him and came to Stack Overflow as a last resort. How do we reward him?  Here is a sample of the feedback we've provided so far    Pick up a good C++ book and learn the actual language.  The problem here is that you have no idea about C++ And why in the world are you converting Managed code to Unmanaged?    All of these have been flagged. But given the load on the moderators this question was closed and the user resorted to apologizing in several comments for his inability to google well enough all while the hostile comments / answers remain.    Does anyone seriously think the OP is going to post here again?    Why do we accept this as OK? Why can five users, who would comment only  if we allowed them, dictate the reputation of the site? Why does it take so long for hostile comments to be removed? Why do we let people who post hostile comments keep posting at all?    If you want to scream RTFM then may I suggest LKML. There should be no place for you on Stack Overflow.
121164
I happened upon  question, where the questioner commented on every answer with "I'd love an up vote!"    Is it correct to flag such clutter, perhaps as not constructive / off-topic, or is there a better way to correct users that beg for up votes (and similar behavior) via comments.
93919
Is there a constructive way to put pressure on Stack Exchange (the company) without putting any pressure on the community in general and the moderators in particular?  Goals   Give Monica her diamond(s) back, with a public apology if the accusations were not founded. Address the underlying issues that led to this blowing up:   Significant policy changes without review; Not assuming good intent when people ask questions; Dictating to—rather than working with—moderators and the community; Attacking or going silent when challenged; Insufficiently asking the community they claim to want to protect for their input on how to do so.    Desired properties  The methods to achieve these goals should:   Be constructive. No trolling, no personal attacks, no targeting of minorities. Be sufficiently effective to change some of the company's KPIs to red () Not require any additional work from the moderators. There's an extreme amount of pressure already, but it's been mostly directed towards the community. Be reversible as soon as improvements are noticed. The goal isn't to permanently damage the company but to force the company to realign with the community. Stack&nbsp;Exchange is still doing a lot of things right.   Past actions  Those actions didn't seem to impress corporate very much:    (While it has a huge impact on the community and the content, there hasn't been any sign that the higher ups seem to care at all). .     What else could work?   Offer a platform for SE employees to anonymously share information relevant to the current problems. Some of the employees clearly feel a strong link to the community, but they are apparently forced to either stay silent or repeat corporate buzzwords. Stop using Stack Exchange paid products at work (e.g. ) Advise everyone to enable Ad-Blockers on Stack Exchange. Change our . Reach out to a prominent Twitter user and let them publicly complain about one of the many recent problems.   Any suggestion is welcome.