18
votes
Accepted
Is this considered bad attitude?
No, you have done the right thing. With some many questions on the site it's very easy to miss the fact that a duplicate exists, and to be fair the site search isn't as great as it could be.
Don't ...
- 351k
18
votes
Accepted
How to deal with negative responses on SE due to personal grudge?
Well, there are a couple of things to say here:
Assume good faith: Unless the user in question explicitly told you "I have downvoted your question and deleted my answer because you would not ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
17
votes
Accepted
Massive downvotes of some questions
There are some effects of highly negative score not related to reputation:
A question below -4 will be pushed of the front page (i.e. what visitors see at `physics.stackexchange.com? ), cf. this meta ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
16
votes
Chosen answers with many negative votes
Part of the problem is that we are not always sympathetic to questions from the less experienced physics fans. In this case the question had attracted two downvotes and no answers by the time I added ...
- 351k
16
votes
The downvote option for questions should be removed?
That's... unlikely to happen, but it is ultimately not something this community can control. The core Q&A engine is managed by Stack Exchange an shared by the 150+ sites in the network, and this ...
- 131k
15
votes
Accepted
Why is the question on wifi being a force being downvoted so much?
When someone asks "Should X be considered a Y?" I expect them to exhibit some form of understanding of the definition of Y, and some form of understanding of what X is. While one may not ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
14
votes
Accepted
Re: Downvoting with no feedback
I would interpret the downvotes on the answers to both of those questions as saying
don't answer this kind of homework questions
and I agree with that perspective. Providing answers to obvious do-...
- 131k
14
votes
Increase weight of downvotes?
This request has a long history going back to the early days of Stack Overflow. You'll notice that question is marked as declined. It was actually status-pending for months before being declined and ...
14
votes
Is it okay to edit a question (on the main site) to downvote it after you initially upvoted it?
Please use edits to substantially improve the posts they are attached to.
Please do not use trivial edits as backdoors to enable site features that are inaccessible to you for some reason.
robMod
- 86.3k
13
votes
How many times can I down vote a particular user over in a given time frame?
To be very frank: you shouldn't even be contemplating this questions; you should always vote the quality of the content and never the user who posted it.
Nor will anyone tell you what the limits of ...
13
votes
Should we downvote answers that begin with "I think..."?
I think this is a terrible idea.
12
votes
Why should there be a negative vote for questions?
Downvotes send a very clear message: this is not the kind of post we want on the site. (If downvotes outnumber upvotes that suggests the opinion is not that of one grumpy curmudgeon but is perhaps a ...
12
votes
Accepted
How many times can I down vote a particular user over in a given time frame?
A few things:
The user you refer to has cast quite a few votes, but only about 81.7% of them are downvotes, not 90%. Call this pedantry, but I think it's important to distinguish between claims and ...
- 10.8k
12
votes
Accepted
Should existing vote tally ever be considered when voting?
Users are encouraged to vote. You decide what are quality posts on Phys.SE and what are not.
Voting should always be based on content, never on previous votes. E.g. comfort-voting is strongly ...
QmechanicMod
- 196k
11
votes
Accepted
Snobs and down-voters
It's important to say up front that a downvote is not a judgement of you, it is a judgement of your question or answer. A downvote means the downvoter thinks it is not a suitable question/answer for ...
- 351k
11
votes
The downvote option for questions should be removed?
I have a lot of sympathy with your position. I will not usually downvote a well intentioned question and I do think we are sometimes a bit over eager to downvote.
But there are a couple of points to ...
- 351k
11
votes
A downvoted question vs. a very well-received duplicate version of the same question!
There is always a random element to voting.
Votes not only refer to the raw content of a question but also its presentation: How easy it is to read (due to formatting) and understand, how well it ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
11
votes
Accepted
What should I do if my answer to a question has a downvote for no reason defined?
Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do other than improving your answer or hoping that the downvoter leaves a comment. Votes are private and there is no obligation for voters to explain ...
- 6,656
11
votes
Accepted
How do I write better answers?
Looking at your reputation tab, this seems to be only the second downvote you’ve received after a year on the site.
I’ll let other folks comment on the specifics of your answer (which also has an ...
robMod
- 86.3k
11
votes
My answer got me -15 points! Why?
The user accepted your answer on Jan 1 at 22:15 (UK time), giving you +15 points, then today they changed their mind and unaccepted the answer so you got a -15 point reversal. Overall your net rep ...
- 351k
10
votes
Can moderator or user with high reputation be held to the rules?
The main mechanism for the reversal of serial voting is automated, because the moderators have access only to summaries of inter-user voting, (not to detailed records) even when our tools alert us to ...
10
votes
Accepted
A greyed answer
This is by design: answers with scores below -3 get grayed out, to indicated that they do not have the community's endorsement.
- 131k
10
votes
Accepted
How can answerers learn, if the downvotes on their answers are not justified?
Is there a way for moderators to act as intermediaries between users who provide an answer, and users who have downvoted said answer?
As a moderator, that's not a job that I want. Users who can't ...
robMod
- 86.3k
10
votes
Accepted
Why did someone downvote my question without reading it completely?
All disciplines have their specialised language i.e. terms that have precise meanings. Some of these terms my be unique to the discipline while others will be terms used in everyday life but ...
- 351k
10
votes
Rationale behind downvote button
Low quality questions on the front page send a signal to first-time visitors that this is not a site worth exploring. Downvoting low-quality questions helps to keep them off the front page.
- 14.8k
10
votes
Why do we still apply the homework policy even when there are many opposite opinions?
There is in fact massive consensus for closing most homework-like questions. The most recent expressions of this consensus are found in this post and this post.
Every so often someone complains about ...
- 45k
9
votes
We can see downvotes on answers by seeing the reputation of a user
Only you can see the -1s that come from downvoting. If I look at your reputation history the SE hides the -1s from downvoting so I cannot see them.
In principle some careful observation could detect ...
- 351k
9
votes
Should editors share the punishment for downvotes?
No.
If the edits were accepted then presumably the edits were considered improvements. The question of when downvotes occur rarely depends on edits: assuming the edits are good, this question would ...
- 45k
9
votes
Accepted
Is this "serial downvoting"?
As the faq on meta.SE says in the section "What if I think I'm the victim of voting fraud?":
If the voting fraud is currently happening or has just happened recently, don't worry about it. ...
ACuriousMindMod
- 122k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible