From your comments below I think there are some points in my question that needs clarification:  By downvote I mean the negative rep on the question starting from (-1) that conveys that the question is of low quality and not every downvote he gets; its sufficient to notify the OP once for the first negative rep. This question is not duplicate to the above two though they seem to convey the same meaning(I prefer  similar than duplicate.) I am not saying :"it would be nice to notify us" I am saying :"it is crucial to notify us"; bringing each question alone may seem a suggestion for improvement while I'm talking about a solution for a problem..  You really seem to contradict yourselves: You don't want to bother the downvoter to write a small sentence while you expect the OP to check the reputation changes every now and then to every question  in every account he has on the site just to make sure he didn't ask a low quality question!  You say the many notifcations will bother many users. They aren't that much; few low quality questions and you will be banned  Note that I ask to be notified about the low quality questions and not answers fir there is a difference:    a low quality question will never be asked again(other questions will be always marked as a duplicate) while it's possible to have many similar answers to the same question. Questions are usualy fewer than answers so it won't hurt the OP to get 5 extra notifications      I see the same system applyed to the flags and I don't see anyone nagging about why he should write something to inform the moderator.  watching for the decrease in rep points isn't always helping though. Take this question as an example :I get 11 downvotes but still my rep is 12 that's +9 to me. So if I didn't really see the question I would think I did a great job. What about those who answer too many question; A '-20' wouldn't even be noticed.  I hope there is no more ambiguity in the problem I proposed. And please don't get me wrong I'm only posting for the sake of this site or else I wouldn't risk myself to get downvotes.
53253
I don't know if people don't explain why they up or down vote because they don't care or because they don't want the person to know they voted on an answer (or question)... But, it might be nice to be able to leave a comment anonymously as to why it was voted.  It could give us more insight as to people's thoughts on posts.    Really, I think this would come into play a lot more dealing with down votes more than up votes, but I could see it being beneficial in both situations.   See also
62041
A good question will receive many answers, and much more views than normal.    This level of activity is not reflected in the upvoting of said question. I recently encountered several such questions, which until I pointed this in the comments () stayed in the lower 0-2 upvotes.    My two suggestions:   Automatically upvote any question you answer, with the ability to cancel this up-vote. This makes sense to me, as I answer only questions I like/are good (and I suppose others too). Display popup message similar to:       Have you considered upvoting this question?    Addressing comments given so far: Answers do not mean a question is good, but it does imply you have an opinion on it. So why not prompt any one who answers to express their opinion by voting? (Similar to what happens when you upvote an answer to your own question).
44603
I think you should be notified if anything of yours is deleted or even flagged, preferably with some explanation (even if it's a simple categorisation like #rude, #irrelevant, #incorrect) and who did it.  Recently, a couple of comments of mine vanished without warning or evidence afterwards. I'm fine with deletion, but I think it should be used sparingly and be based on democratic decisions. What's the harm of letting a comment simply sit with no up-votes or responses rather than outright removal? Or allow downvoting and then negatively voted comments are hidden by default?  I get the impression that anything I post could be deleted. Very few people want to be unpopular or do the wrong thing. It takes time to understand what something is about and how best to use it (this site). Whether or not what I posted deserved to be deleted is irrelevant because I got no feedback. No-one can learn without feedback. The number of frivolous comments with many upvotes I've seen shows how inconsistently the rules are applied. A community that gives too much power to highly rated users won't grow but turn stagnant.  Sorry if this was rude, inappropriate or pathetic. I'm aware that similar discussions have occurred. In any case, I'll continue to use the site and move on...
74954
The  shows low quality questions and answers.  When out of close votes I'm not sure what to do with the questions. I can still handle the answers fine as there are no limits on the actions I can take.  But for questions one of the actions (close) requires close votes. Sure, I say ok or skip but without the ability to vote for close the process feels a little pointless as I don't have a tool to say "this is bad" anymore and I'm "wasting" time skipping bad things.  Also I'm not sure how the "not sure" votes are recorded and if that degrades the quality of some collected stats when I repeated skip questions that are clearly bad.  One suggestion might be to not show low quality questions to people that are out of close votes.    Some days later: Now that the initial batch of "low quality posts" are done this might not be that big of an issue any more. Even so it happened to me again that I was out of close votes and got a low quality question that I couldn't do anything about.  Another solution might be to allow the casting of a "should be closed" suggestion just to drive down the questions score a little (i.e. counteracting "looks ok" votes) instead of showing the, unusable, option to close.
25279
New users already have a reminder to accept an answer on their question. So I don't see the need in general for this post-answer badgering, even if it is intended to be genuine constructive help (which it almost always isn't). To me it seems like little more than rep greed, especially on a site like StackOverflow where such a reminder comes within 10-20 minutes of posting the answer, and when the comment is clearly intended for the OP to accept the commenter's answer. To me it feels like pressuring the OP to accept their answer before a better answer has a chance to come along (or, as others have put it, rep-whoring).  I know we've talked in the past about , but that deals with the behavior itself. I'm asking about how we should treat the comments after they've come - I'm not sure whether I should send the commenter to the meta question I just linked, flag the comment, or ignore it. Ignoring it doesn't feel right, but saying something in the open might not seem genuine in cases where I have a competing answer.  EDIT I'd like to add something to consider here: the case where a user makes it seem like further discussion or clarification of an answer hinges on an up-vote/accept first. A couple of examples I culled recently, but I don't want to call out the user here (they're both from the same user, on different posts, in response to questions trying to clarify their answer):     consider up-voting my answer if you found it useful first.      up-vote my answer if you found it helpful first.
107357
Considering that , maybe there are ways to track how satisfied these users are?  Since upvotes aren't an option to unregistered users, my thought was a simple, non-intrusive "Was this helpful?" box below answers, that would be shown only to unregistered users who arrived at the page from a search engine.    These "helpful" votes could be translated into upvotes for the user who provided the answer.  Maybe for every 10(?) helpful votes, the user gets one upvote.  I'm not sure what you'd want to do with the "not helpful" votes other than keep them as statistics.  (Show them to 1000+ rep users?  Use them as indicators of potential spam?  Use them as indicators of a question lacking a good answer?)  This would be good for simple questions, that get answered and forgotten quickly.  I think the user who provided the correct answer that helps lots of unregistered users should get some rep for that.  It is desired behavior that should be encouraged!  Another idea: if rep goes to the person who provided the helpful answer, maybe some rep could go to the person that asked the question as well?  (Maybe one upvote on the question for every 20 helpful votes to answers to that question?) After all, if the question is not written well, no one will arrive at the page from a search engine.  This means that well-worded, SEO friendly questions are encouraged.  Obviously, this means you'd have to account for people who are trying to cheat.  I think it shouldn't be too difficult to spot anomalous vote patterns, given the experience the SO team already has with that type of thing.  Another problem would be SEO spamming (i.e. throwing keywords into the post for no apparent reason other than to increase the chance of a Google hit), but I think the existing flagging mechanisms will control this well.  Also, if the question isn't what the user was looking for, then they probably won't find it very helpful anyway.
75583
The topbar only tells us about reputation gains (see ).  But sometimes it only half-tells us:    The explanation of that +1 is nowhere to be found here.  An answer that I downvoted was deleted (hence the return of my 1 rep), but I'm active on several sites and sometimes it takes days (or weeks or months) for such posts to be deleted, so asking myself "what have I downvoted recently?" doesn't necessarily help.  If we're going to show the notification, shouldn't we also show the explanation?
36439
Example: Three days ago I was serial downvoted        After these weren't automatically reversed, 24 hours later, I flagged one of the posts. It was eventually marked as helpful, but the downvotes are still there.  It could be that it was 2 users, but it looks like too much of a coincidence.  What should you do in these circumstances?
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?
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.
57816
I recently downvoted an answer on SO because I believe it didn't actually answer the question, and before I could add a comment, the answer had been deleted. Two minutes later, I looked at the question again, and the same user had re-posted his answer, without the downvote.  I've seen this guy remove answers with negative feedback/downvotes in the past and repost them exactly as they were. My biggest concern is that by getting round the system this way will hide legitimate feedback that may be very relevant to whoever asked the original question.  I feel there's an argument for requiring a vote to close ANY answer or question with any kind of feedback. Personally, I've only ever deleted one question that had answers, because I realised there wasn't an easy way to explain what I was asking, and realised shortly after I posted it that it wasn't possible anyway.
53533
Occassionally, my posts get down-voted. However, most of the time they are up-voted.   When I get a positive reputation change, you get a notification at the top of the site that says +whatever reputation for things like up-votes, accepts and edits. However, when you lose reputation, you have to notice your reputation go down strangely and then actively look in your reputation history to see where the down-vote came from.   So my question is, bearing in mind that there are notifications for positive changes in green; surely it would be logical to notify negative reputation changes in red for example?
30028
If a user is the type of person to consecutively get downvoted to potential negative reputation, so be it. What's the reasoning to maintain a minimum of one?  One reason that may justify this is of trying to not deter new users from the site who haven't read the FAQ and unknowingly and wrongly ask or answer a question. But most of us acknowledge this and not downvote in such a scenario.  So what's the reasoning behind this lower bound of 1?
97843
Once a question has -8 votes, that's it - it disappears.  Perhaps we might discourage users from downvoting more at that point(i.e once it hits -8), because any more downvotes are functionally meaningless, while an upvote may help salvage something.  But once it's at, say, -10 or -15, any downvote behavior is merely a wasted click. Unless that user truly wants to downvote it, which leads to the idea of:  How about making a bold generic downvote symbol once a question hits -8  What about if we said, OK since it's -8, let's delineate that by marking it so and keeping it fixed at -8 even if it gets ten more downvotes( which still reflect on the reputation, even though for newbies and drive-by's they get stuck at "1" rep anyway ).  Related:   Thanks
9859
What should I do when I see a question that is a duplicate of another one?   Should I answer it? Should I downvote it? Should I comment? Should I edit the question to indicate it's a duplicate? If I can, should I (vote to) close the question? What happens when I vote to close as duplicate? Or: Why did a comment with my name on it just appear? Should I flag it for moderator attention? What about similar or related questions?
63900
I always see Stack Overflow users giving -1 to new users' questions. This is not how you welcome a new user to the community. A new user does not know the rules yet.    I suggest that if one wants to give -1 to a new user, you prevent that and ask the downvoter to write a comment instead. new user = 2 first questions    I see the credit rating on my question is now at -9?  My question, is she not well formed or formatted? If you don't agree with the content of a question do you down-rate it? If an Ubuntu user asks a question that might not be reasonable, will you also down-rate it?  No. You post an answer that will present your thinking and correct him? I think that is part of the problem. When you first go to a community like Facebook, and you don't know the faces, you don't feel like any of those people are your relations. Newbies exist here as well, especially in a professional community.    First, welcome the new user in more appropriate way. And most importantly, force them to see/read how to post a good question.
10313
Upvotes are easy on both Main and Meta sites. You like something, you vote it up.  Downvotes are trickier.   On Main down-voting a question means that the question is a poor one. Poor meaning badly written or really annoying for some reason (e.g. give-me-da-codez).  Downvoting an answer usually means it's plain wrong.  On Meta, however, many questions revolve around matters of taste (e.g. ). When voting on answers to such questions, I want to be able to push down the suggestions that I disagree with and promote the ones that I think are correct. But I don't want to hurt people's reputation by doing so.   Downvoting on Meta isn't really saying "your answer is stupid and wrong"; it's more like "I prefer we do it the other way". The whole site is basically meant to discuss matters of social preference, etiquette, do's and dont's, etc.  In Main most people wouldn't downvote an answer just because some other answer is better. People generally accept that there may be different solutions to a problem and feel comfortable in letting upvotes alone decide on the most popular one.  In Meta, on the other hand, there might be groups that really care about some issue and would like to see it solved in a particular way. And, in case , voting on answers would really be voting on preference more than correctness.   Should downvote semantics on Meta be different than on Main?   Perhaps the system should not deduct reputation points if your answer gets downvoted, thereby allowing/encouraging more free downvoting.