@user1306322 Well no. First because I don't agree with animuson at all on that one, but also because he wasn't answering as an employee, he wasn't an employee at the time, just an SO mod.
I'm not the first to say people are lazy and choose to omit commenting when downvoting but I'll say it too, and I don't see anything bad with people here
it's the UX which doesn't make it simple to provide quality feedback quickly
Sure, being lazy is one reason. And it's a good one.
I don't have time to leave detailed explanations each time I downvote. And I actually am among the users who comment most often when downvoting. I will very, very often comment.
But yeah, not always. And the main reason I do comment is because I don't really care about rep any more so I don't care if they come after me to retaliate. Plus, until recently I was a mod on the core sites I am active on which gave me another layer of protection. Most users don't have this and it gets really tiring when people come after you with revenge downvotes.
These new "reaction" thingies might help, I dunno. Personally, I just don't know what any of them mean. So as feedback, they're less useful even than votes. But other people may feel differently.
see every "Downvotes should require comments" post that happens multiple times a day. These people simply didn't research their problem before asking. It can't be fixed, but it's still not useful and poorly researched. No comment will help.
without putting up unnecessary reasons for concern or chilling effects like having your username next to it like in comments, as opposed to votes which are anonymous
@Tinkeringbell I'm trying to find ways to make it easier for users to leave useful actionable responses when they have them, regardless of whether they vote or not
@user1306322 Well, downvoting does give you a pop up to comment if you feel there's room for improvement. We've had several arguments about how it would be nice if people sometimes discussed the merit of a feature in answers instead of downvotes.... But that's behavioral, not really the way people seem to ask for the system to only let you downvotes when you also leave a comment.
maybe if we could add anonymous canned responses kinda like what the close plaque says, but before closing, it could be useful and users would be more likely to leave those without the attached baggage of having their username on it
see, I'm not talking about raising standards for criticism, if anything it's lowering them by picking one of the canned reasons, which are by default less precise than a hand-written comment
If you have a helpful observation simply write a polite and clear comment explaining what the shortcomings are, without a down or up. If your critique is accurate and helpful others will upvote your comment. We had a first timer here earlier and I suggested that they document the bug (quickly before someone else did), they missed out some info and I simply commented - they fixed it and I deleted my comment; and upvoted. No one had to feel bad and they ended up with maximum rep for 2 days.
@user1306322 so, fbueckert is saying that having to pick a canned comment (and enforcing that) will add another barrier to just downvoting.... While people do get to just upvote... So if people don't feel like dismissing three popups, they'll downvote even less
I say to you right now: 1) there is no requirement to leave a middle-level effort response, and 2) there must not be an effort to dismiss any pop-up. Now, is my proposition still requiring more effort somewhere?
@user400654 I believe those come mostly come from Reddit or Quora, believing this is a discussion forum, and they give kudos by pure empathy for the "poor noob " to give them a heads up.
My personal behavior of downvoting mostly follows my "closevote plague" anyways. I've been suspended too often, that I avoid comments coming along at all.
@fbueckert you can do what you want to do, but it is a good idea to leave more options for others to choose from, whatever their reasoning may be (such as not wanting to have their username next to it or having to think of a precise reason, and picking the next best fitting one with a couple clicks instead)
did you ever try reporting a post on facebook? it's ANNOYING because of all the separate steps. it's spam. duh. don't make it harder than necessary to report crap. i'd say downvotes on obvious garbage are the same: nobody wants to spend more time than necessary on garbage. clicking the downvote button is fast. writing a comment isn't. having to choose a justification isn't. so people would downvote less, which would reduce the overall quality on the site
@ThiefMaster I can see the canned comments being useful in 1 case: when flagging VLQ/NAA it could be useful to have the flagger also already post one of the canned options if applicable.... Makes reviewing those a bit easier too as the queue had some indication of why it was flagged....
@fbueckert maybe you don't understand this or I can't explain in understandable terms, but if there are multiple options for leaving feedback with different levels of effort required, people will use them all in different situations
I like @Glorfindel 's Saviour of lost Souls user script a lot. It allows you to provide several actions with a few clicks, optionally including a welcome message with useful information for the OP how to proceed.
What you're suggesting seems to basically put one of those into the system... I don't know if that's going to work, usually canned comments are great to quickly get e.g. a template and link to meta/help... But in the end, the friendliest ones at least seem to acknowledge having read the post by using language specific to it.
imo if you're going to leave any textual feedback at all, you should be required to actually type it out. it should be personal, and directly related to the post at hand.
I'm not interested in helping the poster, most of the time; my experience has been the vast majority don't action it, and there's been enough hostility that I don't feel it's worth my time.
@user1306322 SE sites are not about actionable feedback. Feedback is what you have if you are having a discussion, like on a forum. A down vote conveys precisely what is needed: a vote on the quality. The OP may take it as feedback. But that is not it's purpose. SO is so good precisely because it removed the idea that you must in any way have a discussion. Originally it did not have comments at all, I've been told.