@Laurel I have turned the prior post this into a separate question, but do not expect fair treatment.

@forest I have suggested an alternative procedure for down voting that should be 1) different 2) familiar to users and 3) better. I am asking for it to be considered in a large context namely "What procedure for down voting does the reader think is most appropriate?" I am asking for logical response and discussion. I would be happy to clarify this but do not understand what is not crystal clear about it.

@Daedalus Thank you for your opinion, I fully expected confirmation bias, and said so. The part of the down voting scheme that is broken is that it kills ideas.

@n8te To review down votes in a fashion adapted to individual opinions but otherwise similar to all other forms of negative review on this site; selecting from a list of reasons to down vote, forming a jury of opinion or of highly qualified judge, and having the poster or other protagonist option for challenging the verdict. That is how negative opinions, like criminal convictions, are treated in evolved societies. By comparison, I consider the down voting here to be relatively unenlightened and inconsistent.

@NathanTuggy That there are ~1500 previous questions about down voting must mean that everything is optimal, or is it evidence of a lot of floundering around about something that is idea killing and needs fixing?

@RobertLongson I saw that post but it was an incomplete idea, and did not provide the full societal context that I presented here. I could present more scientific evidence, but, if one cannot entertain a hypothesis without reacting negatively, there is little hope for proceeding to evidence, now is there?

@NathanTuggy Good, you have taken the first step; you are considering the hypothesis. Congratulations, first sign of actual progress. The criminal analogy is meant to illustrate structure, it is the same structure as votes to close, which can be appealed as well. As for expressing the thoughts better, gee, I wish, it is not easy with such visceral reaction being displayed by a lynch mob.

@RobertLongson Well, read this stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4567/… as evidence of my preliminary work on this question. There is little I can do for you if you will not entertain a hypothetical. I have largely stayed away from meta SE, I prefer both the opinions and thoughtfulness of the Cross Validated site to SE. I write here now only after have evolved a really salient opinion, and expect you to treat it unfairly.

@Clive Please refer to stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4567/… for some preliminary evidence. I am being mobbed and lynched, and find it hard to bear, my tone is hard to control, apologies.

@NathanTuggy My claim is that current down voting is idea killing and could stand improvement, the down votes were here are expected and were predicted. That is what I consider to be a structural flaw and should not be taken as condescension, contempt, disrespect or any other such projection on the part of participants. It is not particularly challenging to predict that a flawed structure will yield flawed results.

@ModusTollens There is a research paper showing that concordance of opinion has higher positive predictive value than discordance. It is for that reason that expert opinion, i.e., more expert opinion than that of the typical voter, agrees better with truth values concerning false statements.

@Clive Give me a break, will you please. I referred to the criminal justice system not to dramatize an analogy, just to point to a better thought out approach.

@SPArchaeologist I do not know how to "drop this." Can I delete it? BTW, the only reason I brought it up is because I find that if I try to transfer an idea from physics to statistics, from statistics to pharmacokinetics, from pharmacokinetics to medicine, that the insular thinking in those respective fields make the introduction of slightly different ideas very difficult, gets me labeled a 'maverick' and is problematic. It is also very not good with horrible social consequences. That any conformist can down vote anything that they consider a bit 'off' is really idea killing and not good.

@ModusTollens Current practice requires a slight increased reputation (100+ to 150+) for down voting privileges versus up voting privileges (generally 15+). This provides a hint that up votes and down votes are different, and is in agreement with the widely recognized fact that it takes an expert (e.g., an instructor) to correctly adjudicate an opinion (e.g., of a student) as incorrect.

@Carl You cannot delete it at this point because of site rules, but you may be able to flag it as 'should be closed for not seeking input or discussion', which would be accurate given you're calling everyone who disagrees with you a conformist.

@andmyself Down votes do not subtract as many reputation points as upvotes, the privilege to down vote is granted at a higher reputation level than up voting, and there is ample evidence that agreement is more successful at identifying good ideas than down voting is at identifying bad ones. In summary, down voting without very expert opinion rendering it is tragically flawed, but not so with up voting.

@Clive Good grief, I am referring to well documented behaviours, see confirmation bias. This is not me versus the world, this is me trying to make sense of the world.

@ModusTollens Yes, I have given several examples of inappropriate down voting before, please see discussion on Cross Validated Meta stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4567/….

@Carl Please do us a favor and don't make us sift through all the links in this comment thread(which can and likely will be deleted without notice, as per the nature of comments), and add the relevant information to your question here, instead of spread across several posts and sites. And don't just link the question that contains the individual links to the posts, but link the posts themselves.

@Carl Further, if you are going to cite posts as having unjustified downvotes, make sure you have no stake in said posts to begin with. Simply having a stake will attach bias to said post, as I am sure you are aware, and disqualify its use as evidence of the argued position.

@Daedalus Thank-you sincerely for your help. I have flagged this post as not constructive and asked it to be deleted. The comments are running a bit too hot, fast and furious at this point for me to be able to contribute to much beyond the readers' blood pressures, which is the exact opposite of my intent. If you need an example of the trouble with down voting, you are looking at one.

@Carl This is your post, and thus you have bias concerning it, which of course disqualifies it as evidence.

@ModusTollens Not just me, I manged to get a moderator to agree with me on at least one of them. Now cool it, please. Down voting serves a purpose, however, as constituted there are problems with it that could be easily addressed that just make the experiences on SE a bit more positive.

@Carl When evidence is used to support a viewpoint, it must not be from a biased position. Of course you are going to think that this post has unjust downvotes on it. Its your post. If you want the evidence to mean something to people besides you, then you have to find examples that you have no stake in. You must realize that you yourself have a conflict of interest.

@Daedalus Evidence has no self-awareness, my only concern was for your feelings, actually, and if you do not consider it evidence, I can accept that. However, the literature on confirmation bias is quite robust and you do not need me to convince yourself that it is a major problem. The only solution to that tendency is literally the scientific method; that of postulating hypotheses especially when those hypotheses are most irksome; you might look up the failure of intuition for quantum mechanics as a commonly referred to example.

@Carl You keep tossing around confirmation bias. How about you look up conflict of interest and interpretive bias. Those two terms apply to this current situation. For instance, the sub term of "hostile attribution bias"; I noticed in your linked question on the other site, that you attributed downvotes to dislikes. These two things are not synonymous. I can still like content, as can anyone else, but still apply a downvote to it if it does not meet the site's criteria for on-topic or correctly-formatted material.

@Deadalus What? Confirmation bias is an interpretive bias due to a conflict between prior experience and current negative results; literally a conflict of interest.

@Carl I'm saying your conflict of interest regarding this question rules out this question being used as evidence. Since you know what conflict of interest is, I shouldn't need to state this. Secondly, as an example content which I can like, but still downvote: A recommendation question on SO. I might be looking for the software that was recommended, but I will still downvote it as it is off topic.

@Daedalus As long as the motive for a down vote, be that "off-topic" "incorrectly formatted" or whatever, is not conveyed to the recipient of that down vote, the semantic information conveyed is only 'dislike'. My proposal includes conveying that information to the recipient of the down vote, so as to increase the semantic content, and as well to potentially limit down votes to something rational enough to be actionable so as to save ideas and posts that may be very valuable, but also tricky to express.

@Carl It is already conveyed, and it isn't dislike. Hovering one's mouse pointer over said button explains what it means. Attributing 'dislike' to something that doesn't have 'dislike' written anywhere on it is incorrect. There are already other methods to facilitate this, besides the obvious one above; a comment. However, as history has shown, not everyone appreciates constructive criticism.

@Deadalus Hovering over what shows what? Did not understand what that is referring to. I was referring to a semantic equivalent not to a literal. Sure comments are

appreciated, just like I appreciate yours. Of course not everyone likes constructive criticism, I like it just fine. The only thing I do not like is destructive criticism. Here we go again. Confirmation bias makes people dislike constructive criticism because they do not give up their attachments to their own theories even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

@Carl Your whole premise is flawed, and as long as you base suggestions on that flawed premise, you won't garner a good reception here. You need to understand downvoting properly before you bring something new to the table.

Until you do, all that's going to happen is a repeat of this conversation. You'll suggest another idea to limit downvotes, it'll get shot down, you'll equate it to idea killing, rinse and repeat.

The problem isn't with downvotes. It's with your understanding of them.

@Carl: "Hovering over what shows what? Did not understand what that is referring to." He explained what he was talking about. You said that downvotes, bereft of a reason, only mean "dislike". He explained that the meaning of a downvote can be seen by the tooltip on the downvote button, and it does not mean "dislike". So if someone takes it as "dislike", they are incorrect.

@Carl: "Confirmation bias makes people dislike constructive criticism because they do not give up their attachments to their own theories even when presented with evidence to the contrary." Declaring your opposition to be wrong simply because they are your opposition is arguing disingenuously. If you cannot come up with a reason why your opponents are wrong besides "well, they must suffer 'confirmation bias', because otherwise they'd agree with me", then... there we are.

@NicolBolas I hovered over the down vote button and saw "lack of research effort or unclear." I did not know that was there. That is a literal label, not a semantically correct one.

In specific, it is an attempt to portray a subjective opinion as being objective. A down vote is an opinion, not an objective fact, it is discordant with a posit, and is thus more suspect than an up vote would be.

Typically someone taking an adversarial position position will not examine their own assumptions, but portray the target of their adversity as being incorrect by a generally unstated and unproven assumption that amounts to the righteousness of their opinion.

I'm sorry, but I'm too much of a skeptic to start from the position that someone who takes a position opposite of the position currently on display should be assumed to be wrong until and unless they provide evidence that their position is correct.

To do so gives too much authority to the position currently on display. They don't have to provide similar levels of evidence; they merely make a position.

@Carl: "That is a literal label, not a semantically correct one." OK, so who exactly is it who decides what the "semantically correct" meaning of a downvote is? Would it not be the makers of the site, who put the button there with the intent that it be used for the labeled purpose? And if not them, who? Who has the authority to decide what it means besides the people who put it there?

@Carl Utility and research effort are literally subjective judgements. You can make an argument that there's a way to judge utility objectively, but it's going to be wildly innaccurate, I bet. Nowhere is there any assertion that it's completely objective.

People are casting the votes, after all.

In this case the semantic content results from reduction, the logic of that assertion is that discord has less of a propensity to have value than accord. Who decides? We all do, each to his own. I am addressing this in terms of propensities, if you will, probabilities.

The disagreement you're encountering is because you don't understand the purpose of downvotes. It colors your entire premise, and we can't really constructively discuss changes until you show a full understanding of what they are, and what they're for.

Meh. Disagreement has it's place. In the SE network, downvotes are probably one of the more important curation activities you can perform.

That said, not all downvotes are disagreements; on Meta, yes, usually. Elsewhere, no, they are judgements of the post.

@fbueckert To claim that I do not understand make you quite the mind reader. I wish that were true, that you could read my mind, that would simplify things enormously.

If you did, you wouldn't have forwarded this faulty proposal.

Ipso facto.

@fbueckert Such compliments, I am not worthy.

Judgments of the post, yes, indeed. My question goes to the value of the judgements of the posts in the face of disagreement which is not as fertile as agreement, and the question at hand goes to improving the quality of opinion of the less likely to be correct disagreement, which is currently treated quite differently than an agreement with a post.

And you're devaluing the core curation activity, using extreme hyperbole and faulty understandings to drive the flawed point home.

Well, I think it's safe to say that our point has been made. It's for you to accept, or not. As you can see from your question's reception, the vast majority don't agree with it.

I see no point in trying to continue arguing. Have a good day.

You are attacking the form of my ideas and have left the substance untouched. My hope is that this post will be deleted, I do not deserve to field personal attacks for something as bland as the opinion I have offered.