I personally think down voting is not very useful, and should be replaced with a report abuse option.    (Please see update at bottom for change to feature request based on feedback.  Leaving details in tack for historical purposes.)  Reasoning (Deprecated)   In real life voting you cannot down vote a proposition or politician no matter how much  you would like too. It is to easy for people with a high reputation to abuse by down voting people who are just trying to help instead of only down voting the true individuals who are just initially be lame or idiotic.  I feel that if someone is trying to help but there answer or question is not well formed or right or inline with the site we should comment and let them know and and help them if possible. They can then update the answer or question or just delete it. Stats provided to me by Robert Cartaino (shown below) I feel show that down voting is hardly even used and while not being abused on any wide scale it does get seriously abused by a small few.  I feel that if it isn't really getting used much then it should go as it it tends to get miss-used more than properly used.   I think the down vote should be replaced with a Report Abuse system.    How Report Abuse Would Work  This would provide a "Report Abuse" link on all questions, answers and comments. A single report would could be queue as low priority for the moderators to review.  However as it gets more and more reports by other individuals its priority for review goes up.  It could even have a threshold that would automatically deactivate or remove the report item if gets a specific (large) number of reports.  The number of abuse reports can be shown as a counter on the item if it gets more than 1 report.  The report must provide an shoot intelligent reason why it is an abuse.  Help Others With Conversation Not Negative Reputation  I am for people be made aware of being incorrect and being helped to be better in the future or correct there post.  I am not for maligning another persons reputation with negative values who is just trying to be helpful or earnestly looking for help, even if they where not perfect in the question or answer.  Provided Stats     Down-voting is statistically very   rare. The account for only 0.8% of all   the votes cast on the system. And   we're not seeing any large patterns of   abuse. Of the 7.5 million users who   come to Stack Overflow every month,   only 18(!) users have cast more   down-votes than up-votes (with > 100   down-votes)... ever! - Robert Cartaino (via email)   While I am quoting stats provided by Robert, I am not implying that he is in favor of this feature. In fact my impression is he is not sold on the idea so he suggested putting it to the community as a feature request.     EDIT - UPDATE 7-9-2010  Since there is already an abuse system it is just called "Flag" which is not a good user experience as it is not obvious what that is for.  I would suggestion Flag be called "Report" to clarity.  Also if we keep the down voting why not then make minor changes to it which would be Down Votes require a comment explaining why or you can't do it.  This makes it not anonymous, which will make people think before doing it and reduce the abuse even more if they have to explain why it is not a good answer or question.  Doing this would make it easier to understand why you got a down vote, because getting one or more with out a reason is confusing.
Note: If you're looking for a simple explanation as to why comments aren't required on downvotes, see .   I used to get "upset" (though that is too strong a term) when I got downvoted without comment. If my answer isn't good enough then I'd like to know why. Not only does it improve the answer for the OP but it improves my knowledge too.  Where the down-vote has been explained I've found it useful &amp; it has improved my answer, or forced me to delete the answer if it was totally wrong.  So is there any way we can encourage people to leave a comment? Perhaps they don't lose rep if they explain their down-vote?  I must admit though that I haven't always explained my down-vote either so you could call me a hypocrite. I've also grown a thicker skin over the months of using SO (it seems to have come with the higher rep score ;-)), so I'm less bothered about this now.
What are review tests (audits) and how do they work? I recently received this rather amusing message while reviewing a user's first post:  Congratulations! This was only a test, designed to make sure you were paying attention. This post has already been removed, but thanks for taking time to leave feedback for the author.   What is the purpose of this test? How does the audit work? What happens if I fail? Why was the system expecting me to negatively review a good post, or positively review a bad post? A review is obviously an audit. Should I report it? Do review audits count toward the Reviewer badge? Do robo-reviewers dream of electric sheep? Which video editor can I use to make clips to upload? I am looking for an easy video editor for Ubuntu 12.04. My needs are simple: make clips and upload them on sites (cut segments from a video file with frame to frame precision, convert into common formats, resize the file).  Can anyone suggest one? Is "po-TAH-to" an acceptable pronunciation for "potato"? Immortalized in the George and Ira Gershwin song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" is the nitpicking of pronunciation differences:      You like potato and I like potahto,   You like tomato and I like tomahto,   Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!   According to  and other sources, the English do pronounce tomato as tə-MAH-toh rather than tə-MAY-toh. But this doesn't seem to be the case when it comes to potato.     (From the O.E.D.)           –  Pronunciation: /təˈmɑːtəʊ/     –  Pronunciation: /pəˈteɪtəʊ/   Is "potahto" actually an acceptable way to pronounce potato? Or is the song just wrong? I'm struggling to find the limit at infinity of : $$\lim \limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sin^2(\pi\sqrt{n^2 + n}), n\in\Bbb N$$ I know it is $1$ but I don't understand why this is wrong :  $\sin^2(\pi\sqrt{n^2 + n}) = \sin^2(\pi*n\sqrt{1 + \frac{1}{n}})$.  So $\lim \limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sin^2(\pi\sqrt{n^2 + n}) = \lim \limits_{n\rightarrow\infty}\sin^2(\pi*n\sqrt{1 + \frac{1}{n}}) =  \lim \limits_{n\rightarrow\infty} \sin^2(\pi*n) = 0$.  Thanks. Who is doing the normalization of wave function in the time evolution of wave function? In the Schrödinger equation, at any given time $t$ we should jointly add another sub equation, like $$||\psi_t(x)|| = 1$$ where $\psi_t(x) = \Psi(x,t)$, and then try to solve the two equations simultaneously. Why not? I know it does not yield, but I am always baffled, who is doing the normalization of the wave function? Observers, the system, the measuring process, God? My machine can't play encrypted DVDs on a fresh install.  How do I add this capability?  Another useful bit of information would be what programs are best for playing DVDs, once I'm able to do so.  See the .  Will I be able to play DVD movies from ? What are bitwise operators? I'm someone who writes code just for fun and haven't really delved into it in either an academic or professional setting, so stuff like these bitwise operators really escapes me.  I was reading an article about JavaScript, which apparently supports bitwise operations. I keep seeing this operation mentioned in places, and I've tried reading about to figure out what exactly it is, but I just don't seem to get it at all. So what are they? Clear examples would be great! :D  Just a few more questions - what are some practical applications of bitwise operations? When might you use them? In the special relativistic action for a massive point particle, $$S=\int_{t_i}^{t_f}\mathcal {L}dt,$$ why is the Lagrangian $$\mathcal {L}=-E_o\gamma^{-1}$$ a negative number? How do I install applications in Ubuntu? When should I use a fixed or variable time step? onClick to get the ID of the clicked button Firefox application associations not working in the 'Downloads' window Issue with particles in blender donut tutorial Whenever both my roommate and I use the wifi in a certain room in our apartment, it slows dramatically for me. It doesn't slow for him. If he uses it in another room, it's fine; if I use it in another room together with him, it's fine; it's just in this particular room. Does anyone know of a reason this could be? Let $A,B,C$ be sets, and $B \cap C=\emptyset$. Show $|A^{B \cup C}|=|A^B \times A^C|$ Let $A,B,C$ be sets, and $B \cap C=\emptyset$. Show $|A^{B \cup C}|=|A^B \times A^C|$ by defining a bijection $f:A^{B \cup C} \rightarrow A^B \times A^C$.  Any hints on this one?  Thank you! When interacting with different elements and applying multiple actions it  may be quite convenient in some situations if we could do:  WebElement myInput = driver.findElement(By.id("my-input-id")); myInput.clear().sendKeys("test");   Instead of:  WebElement myInput = driver.findElement(By.id("my-input-id")); myInput.clear() myInput.sendKeys("test");   But, the problem is , sendKeys() and other "action" methods cannot be chained as is - they return void and not the current WebElement.  What would be the easiest way to achieve chaining multiple actions? So I've been pulling my hair out over this for the last couple days now, I can't seem to find any solutions that work. I've fresh installed Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 on my system which has no other OS's running on it. Everything's fine aside from the fact that the default Nouveau display driver seems to be causing the UI to freeze sporadically every now and then. No problem right? Just install the proprietary drivers for my GPU and we should be golden? Well here's the thing, no matter how I try to get my GPU's drivers installed I always seem to hit some sort of issue. Here's what I've tried so far:   Switch to the proprietary driver from within the 'Software &amp; Updates' app in Ubuntu. For me the only option available is the 'NVIDIA binary driver - version 375.66 from nvidia-375 (proprietary, tested)'.    After selecting this driver it goes through the install process, asks me to 'configure secure boot' by entering a password, etc. This all seems to work fine initially until I reboot, but then before I see the login screen it seems to open a virtual terminal (usually accessed via alt+shift+F1), but then immediately boots me back to a black screen where it will flash this terminal for a split second every 4 seconds or so. I can access this terminal by using alt+shift+F1, and go on to use it as normal, but it will continually boot me back out to the black screen every few seconds. The only way I can solve this is to keep accessing the terminal each time it boots me out while I purge the nvidia drivers using sudo apt purge nvidia-*. After purging I'm then able to access the login screen and access my Ubuntu again as normal, besides having to reboot to presumably activate the Nouveau drivers again otherwise the resolution is all messed up and only one of my three monitors has anything displayed on it.    Using the steps listed  I download the latest stable/certified driver for my GPU (which as of writing this is version 384.69). However on step 3 where it instructs me to run the driver using sudo sh, I reach an issue where the installer informs me that I need to disable the Nouveau driver in order to continue. I've tried everything from uninstalling Nouveau using 'sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau` to blacklisting Nouveau using the steps listed , by editing the 'nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf'.    Unfortunately no matter what I do to try and disable Nouveau the installer always informs me that the Nouveau driver is enabled and needs to be disabled in order to continue. What's funny is that I managed to install the driver using this method once before, but for the life of me I can't get it to work again.    Finally, I've attempted to install the driver by installing the PPA. I run sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa, sudo apt update, and finally going back into the 'Software &amp; Updates' app and select the 384.69 driver. However after going through the install process the same issue as described in my first method (1.) occurs.    I've also tried switching between gdm3 and lightdm with all 3 methods to no avail. I'm at a complete loss as to what to do. If anyone has any possible solutions I'd love to hear them, because right now I'm at the end of my tether.   If you require any further information just let me know and I'll be more than happy to provide it.   System info:   AMD FX-8350  Nvidia GeForce GT710 1gb  16gb RAM  Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 LTS Regarding the sum $\sum_{p \ \text{prime}} \sin p$ I'm very confident that  $$\sum_{p \ \text{prime}} \sin p $$  diverges. Of course, it suffices to show that there are arbitrarily large primes which are not in the set $\bigcup_{n \geq 1} (\pi n - \epsilon, \pi n + \epsilon)$ for sufficiently small $\epsilon$. More strongly, it seems that $\sin p$ for prime $p$ is dense in $[-1,1]$.   This problem doesn't seem that hard though. Here's something that (to me) seems harder.      If $p_n$ is the nth prime, what is $$\limsup_{n \to +\infty} \sum_{p \ \text{prime} \leq p_n} \sin p?$$   What is $$\sup_{n \in \mathbb{N}} \sum_{p \ \text{prime} \leq p_n} \sin p? $$   Of course, we can ask analogous questions for $\inf$.   I'm happy with partial answers or ideas. For example, merely an upper bound. Vectors, structs and std::find I have a bibliography in which a particular author wrote two papers in the same year. Bibtex is sorting them alphabetically by title, but I want them listed chronologically. (So in the example below 'universal grammar' should precede 'English as a formal language'.) What's the appropriate way to flip the order?  MWE:  \documentclass{article} \usepackage{natbib} \begin{document}  ... formal semantics in the  Montagovian tradition \citep{montague1970aug,montague1970befl,montague1973ptq}.   \bibliographystyle{harvard} \bibliography{test} \end{document}   This generates the text 'formal semantics in the Montagovian tradition (Montague, 1970b,a, 1973)' whereas I actually want '1970a,b,1973'.  test.bib file for MWE:  @incollection{montague1973ptq,   title={The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary {English}},   author={Montague, Richard},   booktitle={Approaches to natural language},   editor={Hintikka, K. Jaakko J. and Moravcsik, Julius M.E. and Suppes, Patrick},   pages={221--242},   year={1973},   publisher={Dordrecht} }  @article{montague1970aug,   title={Universal grammar},   author={Montague, Richard},   journal={Theoria},   volume={36},   number={3},   pages={373--398},   year={1970},   publisher={Blackwell Synergy} }  @incollection{montague1970befl,   title={English as a formal language},   author={Montague, Richard},   booktitle={Linguaggi nella Societa e nella Tecnica},   editor={Visentini, Bruno and others},   publisher={Edizioni di Comunità},   pages={189--224},   year={1970} }