Soon they will change the downvotes to be -10, so that people will ask a question only when it is really worth asking it or provide an answer when they know the topic perfectly.
Can you let me enjoy this extra rep bubble for now? Let's wait a little and then complain if we see negative behavior magnifying.
user287113
The SO company should be more aware of the consequences when they are messing with the reward system, because they will obtain different goals. It's just reinforcement learning, guys!
The previous issues, it was obvious why the community was voicing concerns. This time, I'm not sure anyone has done the research and has the data to make a reasonable prediction and then worry about future pitfalls, and it's just the guru™ common sense arguments, and there are conflicting ones all around.
I need someone to convince me one way or another whether this has potential for harm, and single glaring eyesores don't count. Then I'd consider raising my metaphorical rather apathetic pitchfork
@JonEricson We're good at dealing with complete garbage, sure. But anything even just slightly better tends to get a few upvotes. At least when it doesn't slip through the cracks. Very few people seem to be asking themselves whether a question they're seeing has any future value whatsoever before upvoting it.
PLEASE OH PLEASE convince me this is going to be a problem. Of course, there's the usual "there was no consulting the community" thing, I'm totally fine with that. But this one, I think the downvotes are even less than dislikes somehow.
Well, I'm not assuming anything about any single downvoter.
But if I get the time, I would like to read an elaborate convincing argument on why this in itself is going to harm things, from any of the folks who are going to reduce that post's score to -100 in a few.
@M.A.R. It's hard to be sure it's going to be a problem, but it should be easy to see why it might be a problem if you're of the opinion that bad questions get upvoted way too often as it stands (which encourages users to post more such questions). If you're not of that opinion, you probably won't and shouldn't think it's a problem.
@NotThatGuy I'd argue that askers can't possibly know whether their question can have future value to others. (Unless they are already experts in the thing they are asking about. And if they are, I hope they are self-answering. ;-)
I have a bunch of tar files in a directory and I want to extract all the files from them at once. But this doesn't seem to do anything:
$ tar xf *.tar
What's going on here? How do I untar a bunch of files at once?
@JonEricson When trying to judge whether a question might have future value, I look for (a) things which are so common someone looking for this specific question can't possibly use them to find it (e.g. "why is my code not working?"), (b) questions that have too much other stuff or don't dig deeper so it won't be useful to those with problems with the same root cause ("why is this 500 line program throwing a NullPointerException?").
I try to assume someone, somewhere will at some point have a similar problem. I don't count it against a question if I think it's very unlikely that someone will have the same problem (only that that person won't be able to find this question).
There should be additional criteria. Since there's usually not more than a few people voting on a question, to ensure at least a small degree of differentiation for most questions, you need to be a tad bit stricter than that
Some things like "does this guy even wanna learn?" or "is this nothing more than what almost every programmer/engineer/student/leprechaun is being taught?"
@M.A.R. I guess I don't see why we need to make this more complicated. It certainly hasn't helped reduce bad questions to make complicated voting (or closing) rules.
My criteria for upvoting questions is having it be something that makes me question everything I thought I knew about people, changes my life forever (in a good way) and dispenses free candy.
I'm just saying that the average SO question being absolute . . . uh . . . having a lot of problems with grammar, formatting, punctuation, clarity, objectivity, prior research etc. doesn't need to affect the voter's ideal behavior
Too strict the guidelines and a lot of questions would end up with zero votes. But I find that a lot of people are too apathetic, a few are too strict, and not enough vote in the direction of keeping the ideal balance (ideal defined as the most differentiating viewpoint that sorts the questions neatly)
I've been more reserved about downvoting too these days. It feels about as effective as pissing in the ocean. All you can really hope to gain is upsetting the person next to you.
It doesn't help that on some sites we go out of our way, a half dozen people might spend an hour, helping people to improve their (our) question while on some other sites it's soup guy.
@TRiG Yes, they came up with Lifejacket and Lifeboat to reward the poster when they get a voting reversal, unfortunately there's little reward for the editors. --- I've answered downvoted questions that I could understand, but weren't well received; earned some "Thank yous" and 25+. It all depends on the site, that's why I disagree with a simple doubling across the board, some sites are hard to ask and answer on.
I have a bunch of tar files in a directory and I want to extract all the files from them at once. But this doesn't seem to do anything:
$ tar xf *.tar
What's going on here? How do I untar a bunch of files at once?
![More likely: Click on all the pictures of people who appear disloyal to [name of company or government]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/machine_learning_captcha.png "More likely: Click on all the pictures of people who appear disloyal to [name of company or government]")
