hi, I was thinking a bit, and I think this system could also fix the long-standing issue of "I do not get notified about edited posts that I downvoted, hence I could not release it when the issue is fixed"
because if people are allowed to vote on this, this could be done without the original downvoter.
**The Problem** As now, any user can downvote an answer in perfect anonymity. While this is desirable since anonymity prevents the risk of the voting degenerating in rants, flaming and such it also opens the gate to random downvoting that just add noise to the system.
In the current state anyone is allowed to disprove an answer just because he fells like doing so, with non indication of that begin given to future readers.
so, what I mean is that the downvote reasons and downvote would be bound in the background (in the system without even mods, so algorithm)
so no one would be revealed and would be handled automatically like serial upvotes, etc.
but yes, perhaps we can leave the reviewing system off for now...
perhaps, there is no need to review and remove junk in the first iteration because if people read the junk comments, they understand that the answer is actually not necessarily that bad even if downvoted, albeit one could argue the same without junk reasons, but there is some doubt in that case, I think.
@SPArchaeologist: you are right, many people are afraid of commenting due to the revenge. That is a real issue.
(and that is likely the reason in my case for the unexplained downvotes I got back, at least partially)
@LaszloPapp Nope, Laszlo. If no reason is given, you can argue nothing. You cannot confront your idea with something that does not exist. On the other side, if the user post a junk reason there is a concrete evidence that he had nothing useful to tell.
we need to explain them that then do not downvote if you do not have time to click and/or explain, but we need to figure out how to explain so that they can take it inside for consideration.
or they need to communicate their concern with us clearly that we can take inside and get convinced. :)
I think that the only way to "win" is to explain clearly (hoping to meet a listening crowd and not a wall) that if you don't say WHY the answer is not correct/desirable then you aren't adding any value to the system
yes, it requires some research to see what the root of their concern is (perhaps it is something else than we think?), and we need to make some conversation with them inviting to here, to see whether they are convincable or they can convince us, etc.
it is possible we are wrong, and we do not know something, and they just have not revealed it yet, but what currently is ongoing is not good, nor healthy, so if it is the best for such a site, that is unfortunate.
the problem with discussion on meta is that it gets stuck pretty quickly into one view, at least in my experience.
@AlulaErrorpone Yep, I had posted almost the same comment on meta some time ago. Wrong= there is an issue. But what is the issue? I don't know without me telling
and I do think there is crowd downvoting happening in meta, too.
so if you get 5-10 downvotes initially, it is chancy that it will get much worse, and not the other way around.
also, we probably need to discuss it with core people of the community, too :)
because if the core people think it differently, many people will follow them, so we would need to understand some core people's concern, too, before proposing.
Everyone is eager to click on the downvote button rather than leaving comments to improve QnA or justify their downvotes. I guess some people have taken this as a habit.
This is by design. Stack Overflow is not a forum. You have no obligation to get into an extended discussion with people over the validity or appropriateness of their posts. Instead, we rate content using a voting system. Useful content gets upvoted, and not useful content gets downvoted. The net score then determines how the community overall rates that content.
usually as said on meta there are 3 reason to downvote without a comment
•"Your post is bad, but someone else has already made a comment explaining why, which I fully agree with." •"Your post is bad in some way, but I can't be bothered to tell you why, because I'm lazy." •"I don't like you."
There is also - "This has been asked 100s of times and you were to lazy to search, why should I search for duplicates for you?" - Granted, this falls within your lazy bullet, but is it really constructive to force someone to search for you every time? I think the duplicate system needs to be fixed to solve this particular reason - "This is a typo and two seconds out side of notepad and in a real IDE would show you that" - This is spam
then personally, there are a few other reasons I've down voted without comments:
I also think anonymity is important. Even disguising the comments as being from Community, doesn't get around that a good downvote reason could be traced back to a user.
@Andy Andy, we are discussing uncommented downvotes on --answer--. While I agree on some of your points, that are more likely fit for votes on questions.
Tell me, @Andy. If someone upvote you answer you think that is reasonable to ask "why you think I am right?". nope, it isn't needed. Is downvotes that needs reasons
@AlulaErrorpone Again, I agree, but many duplicates receive more downvotes than they do close votes. I try pretty hard to cv the more egregious duplicates, but it gets frustrating.
Here the problem isn't just you user that "arbitrary" lose rep because "I didn't like your avatar". The problem is for readers, and anon reader are at the worst
well... you have a point on that. @LaszloPapp, take notice. Maybe your proposal could include that "Other upvoted answers should change the need for a reason downvoting yours?"
@Andy Anyway. I am still somehow worried on the criteria for determining that the approach is better.
tell me.
you see two answers: one has 2 votes. the other 3.
correct. But I would also point out that the one with 3 votes could actually be a +4/-1 while the other is +2/-0
If we are to assume that the -1 has a reason it would seem that the most upvoted answer could be actually the worse for you because it hides an issue somewhere.
But so bad for you, anon user. You cannot see split vote. And downvoter was lazy and didn't comment. Have fun fixing that bug two months from now.
It could also be the author of the other post trying to knock down his competitor a peg, it could be a random troll, it could be someone that is un-happy with the efficiency of the answer (ie. answer is 5 lines of code when it could be done in 2). Does a single downvote matter? Or should we be more concerned with a larger number of downvotes
It may not be bug related at all. And, personally, on Stackoverflow I feel it's pretty easy to test an answer. It either works or it doesn't. There are other sites on StackExchange where the answers aren't as clear cut.
if the -1 was a vote on the Zalgo regex answer (or one of Skett posts) I would laugh at it
is when the -1 is on a post with 2 votes in all that I start having concerns.
@Andy (anyway, don't worry. No need to be sorry. I understand that we have different view but it only expected since the difference in upvotes on the specific sites).
Just to make sure I'm understanding correctly, you are concerned when the up/down vote ratio is low (say 2:1, 3:1, 4:1) but not when it starts getting about 7:1/10:1 or higher?
unexplained downvotes are useless, no matter what, and when it is more than just 1-2, it irritates people, and causes a lot of headache for the SO community.
it is basically poisoning the community needlessly. There is literally almost no day when I do not see downvote reason begging, and frustrated people.
It sounds like you want to limit a maximum ratio disparity then. Instead of running into a potential 100:3 situation, you want to prevent the 100upvotes in the first place.
@Andy: I was posting an answer yesterday, where the other answer got 7 upvotes within an hour without any attempt to address the question, and it was even wrong on its own.
but yeah, it is a different and more difficult issue ...
he just made it sound like if he was doing what he was writing about :)
@LaszloPapp I think the problem here is exposure time on the front page and likely the amount of rep the answerer had. (More rep = more right, in may user's eyes)
Or user experience. One of the users from two years ago that downvoted may have been brand new to a technology and didn't understand the answer so just downvoted, but if they were to come back to the question now after two years of experience would understand the answer
@Andy As I said before in the tavern, my concern here are pretty community driven. I work with sharepoint and often code that SEEMS to work actually hide some very obscure bugs- bugs that may be trigger only after months of production usage.
That is why I am scared every time I see an unexplained downvote (unless I can understand the reason myself - but again, someone else may not be so lucky).
@Andy: as I wrote, I do not have a strong opinion about it, nor does it matter for me now that much. These things can be fine tuned. I definitely would not object now either way.
@SPArchaeologist Which is understandable, but I think to get your proposal through MSO, you'll have to be able to generalize it to the entire network and probably make it somewhat relevant to SO (unless you wait to post it until the split occurs)
But there are differences between Sharepoint and SO. SO is general and receives many, for lack of a better term, "homework questions" with a short code block, an error message and a request to get rid of the error message. The answers provided do that and often don't account for situations that can occur 'later'. Sharepoint seems to be more focused on how the answer to continue to work over the long term.
@Andy: I can speak for myself, I mostly contribute to the Qt tag and as you can see my highest scores compared to others, it is very low. It is because the tag is not so common. If I go to the C++ tag, I can gather reputation and scores much easier.
@Andy Imho that's not the real problem. The problem is that SharePoint knowledge is really scarce. And it is more difficult to evaluate if something is correct.
Let's put it this way: user A comes to the site to find an answer to his problem. He googled it and now he hopes his pain has ended. But now... nope. You have decided that you are "entitled" to mock him.
@SPArchaeologist So it's a community size problem and is relevant to subcommunities of SO (ie. Qt vs C++). If a question in Qt gets multiple downvotes for no-reason you can knock a decent answer into the negatives, but if a decent answer in C++ receives 3 negative votes they could still be one of the higher scoring answers.
You are having a couple of issues why your code does not compile:
Missing the semi-colons after the class declarations, provided they are in the same file. Failing that, you would of course need to include the header file containing the Symbol's declaration into your file using it.
You are usin...
2/2
and the one with 9/0 has nothing to do with solving the issue in the question IMHO. :)
I was the first one providing a working code, it was 2/0
I must apologize, I need to run to a meeting. I will return 'soon', depending on how the customer is feeling this morning. Thanks for the discussion thus far everyone.
perhaps, I even agree with your idea as the first step, since as much as we can make it lightweight for the resistant people, the more chance we have they do not downvote the proposal to oblivion.
I would call it Fraud/Unexplained Downvotes (crowd) or so room, but I do not mind it either way, really. The description is clear after all.
@JasonC Don't take it as an offense, but have you read what issue we are discussing here? It is not about "sigh I have got a downvote". It is about "What is wrong with this".
@SPArchaeologist No; it's disguised as that, but essentially it was prompted by Laszlo getting a bunch of down votes here then throwing a huge fit here and saying he was leaving SO forever, and now he can't get over it. So yes, on the surface it seems civil, but really, it's about being butt hurt.
room topic changed to [Debate] The issue with uncommented Answer votes and attemps to solve it: Discussion about possible solutions/proposals for the unexplained answer downvote problem, (no tags)
@JasonC: please stay civil and calm in this room. This room is not for generating more stress, but finding solutions for such issues. We are trying to make SO a better place here, even if you disagree, that is our intention with all good faith.
room topic changed to [Debate] The issue with uncommented Answer votes and how we can solve it: Discussion about possible solutions/proposals for the unexplained answer downvote problem, (no tags)
You know how on SO, we like to identify XY problems when we can? And if a user asks a question, we often try to help them by providing other suggestions for the real underlying problem that could help them in the bigger picture?
@JasonC Better? Actually you see.... that is pure Nonsense. As you can see I was in the problem far before Laszlo said anything, so he just remembered me a discussion that I already had. Sorry. But evidence prove that your assumptions are wrong.
This is also an XY problem. You don't need to require explanation for downvoted answers. You do need to reflect on why this has upset you so much and try to think of other ways to define your self-image besides votes on SO so that you don't continue to get upset about it in the future.
@SPArchaeologist You started this room last night?
uh, now I get it. @SPArchaeologist is outright correct, or at least I completely agree with him, your tone is about: "Hey, you are guys upset needlessly, do not be emotional", whereas everyone here says, how to make SO a better Q/A site for the information. No one is personal here, no one is about getting downvotes, but how @SPArchaeologist put: how to improve posts and the quality of the site.
@LaszloPapp The thing that you don't seem to want to accept is, downvotes are working fine right now. They already do a good job at sorting the good from the bad.
You are trying to rationalize your own tantrums by pretending that it's about "improving the quality of the site" when you know full well that the system is working great despite having a few unexplained ones here and there.
No... I just commented and answered on some proposal about this problem on meta about one year ago. So to be more clear "essentially it was prompted by Laszlo getting a bunch of down votes here then throwing a huge fit here" is nonsense. I had that idea far before some complaint that I never even read can trigger it. I just catch the occasion to start this discussion again.
you are ranting, and I would appreciate toning yourself down. This is not constructive. You should start with the history of this room and the discussion in Tavern. Then, you might not claim incorrect things...
@LaszloPapp No I'm not ranting. Everything I've said so far has been (in my opinion) valid suggestions for other approaches and valid explanations for what you're doing here. You don't get to call everything that disagrees with you a rant.
@LaszloPapp And it's pretty easy to see the chat history.
Here's a question.
Last night you wrote:
> I have just recounted, I got 11 unexplained downvotes today.
The question is: I didn't get 11 unexplained down votes. Why do you feel you did? What did you and I (for example) do differently yesterday that led to you getting 11 unexplained down votes?
As @SPArchaeologist already wrote several times, this problem has existed for a long while, and it is just me this time having enough persistence to pick it up, and apparently, it generated a lot of sympathy so far. In fact, my whole proposal was about making a compromise between the two groups and I was suggesting more lightweight solution than the ones already provided.
@jasonc: Although you might not agree with @laszlopapp, this is his chat room and his discussion place. It might be best to let him discuss his feelings here as he sees fit.
@JasonC: meh, you are not moderating as much as I do, nor do you express critics for other answers as I do.
but this is really immaterial in every sense possible, it is a generic problem, it is not about me. It is just that I was the Xth person having the same issue again. A 100K+ user deleted his account lately for exactly the same reasons.
Ok: two ways to proceed here. First. Ignore the noise like I did. Second. I make this private and you can ask me non the tavern to join. Just please return on topic
Sorry but I don't care about the drama. If you want an opinion I can give it on the tavern. Here I am searching for an answer to a problem. Case closed.
also, when submitting a proposal, it must be clear that it is not about comforting one person having gotten lots of unexplained downvotes.
or maybe that step blocked the actual fix? Because if the current proposal was accepted, that popup would not be necessary anymore.
The problem is that even if you cared, you get used to ignoring it. That is the UX issue with such "warnings" on the web. It is pretty easy to get used to ignoring.
Y'all are a bunch of whiners. I have gotten more downvotes on SO than all of you put together. Go do something productive instead of hand-wringing about fake internet points.
look... @Shog9. As far as I am concerned you can remove the displayed rep score tomorrow. If ye find some other way to manage the privilege system. I could not care less :P
@Shog9 It's not about fake internet points, it's about helping people to improve the quality of their questions & answers.
4
I really don't care about my SO rating, if they removed displayed points tomorrow my usage wouldn't change. I don't use SO to grow my e-peen, I use it to grow my technical knowledge and help others to improve theirs.
hopefully Shog9 will come back to actually have a discussion about our concern... He seems to be pissed off by the topic for some reason which we need to understand why, or at least I would appreciate knowing more about it.
Imagine if we had a CV system without reasons. You just vote to close an answer then walk on. No one would defend that because the point of a CV is to improve the quality of questions on the site, and downvotes should be the same.
If downvotes are just about 'fake internet points' then they serve no useful purpose. It's the status quo that makes them all about that and these proposals which propose to make them more useful.
Actually, I have always find that funny. Mods or 20k users arguing about flag reasons. You rejected my flag because it was "not an answer" while it should be "Spam"? And you leaved the spam message there?
But that is not the point now, let's stay focused on the problem.
again. Basically we can say that the problem is missing information
there are many examples out there why this behavior pattern is discouraged... I have never seen this pattern during code review, email discussions etc, without the "compulsory" follow-up question: "what is the problem"?
yes, I have never understood that either... but I think that would still uncomfort "lazy" (I call them careless) people.
some people just want to downvote without doing more based on what you said earlier ... "Be happy that I gave some time to this community, and do not demand more".
they want to contribute a little and they do not wanna feel unwelcome for their attempt, I think.
@LaszloPapp And that is my point. Consider me a devil now, but my seer experience on UO taugh me that the right answer would be "that is the exit. Please make yourself at home out of there".
If that is the time you gave me, you would have cause less confusion by giving none
yes, I think we need to appreciate their willingness to contribute, but unfortunately it fires back, so while the intention is good, the end result is unfortunate.
You are having a couple of issues why your code does not compile:
Missing the semi-colons after the class declarations, provided they are in the same file. Failing that, you would of course need to include the header file containing the Symbol's declaration into your file using it.
You are usin...
