The last 10 questions asked have all been down-voted. I think maybe we are being a bit too aggressive is down-voting questions, particularly for new users. What can we do to improve the situation?
(Personally I never down-vote a question. If its off topic I Vote to close. To me Down-voting a question seem to be saying "This is a bad Question.". I'm in the "there no such thing as a bad question" camp)
I downvote questions quite often. Though interestingly, I dont think I downvoted any of the questions in your screenshot.
Some say 'there are no bad questions'. I say there sure as heck are.
Part of being a good developer is knowing how to ask good questions. When you work with technical subjects, questions must provide enough context to receive a technical answer. If I see a question where the poster has clearly not stopped for a minute to think if they've provided all the necessary information for someone to answer their question without a bunch of back and forth conversation, I downvote. If I see a question thats clearly off topic, thus indicating the poster didnt read the site's FAQ, I also downvote.
Is that scaring users off? I have no way of knowing. What I do know, though, is that if there is no feedback about good vs bad questions, you will not encourage good questions, and only encourage the lazy question writers who find it easier to ask a bad question than to do a few minutes worth of research.
The text of the down arrow on a question does read
This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful
Strictly speaking, questions that do not belong here aren't useful to this community and there's no problem with downvoting them.
However, I don't vote that way. Questions that I downvote are questions that are too unclear, too simplistic (easily solved with a search), or so argumentative or blog-like that they, in my opinion, can't be fixed. I might not be able to fix it because I don't have the knowledge or expertise in the topic area to understand the question, but if I open a question and see a possibly good question hiding in there, I don't downvote. Likewise, a clear, well-written question that doesn't belong here doesn't get a downvote from me, but I do vote it as off-topic so it gets closed (and hopefully moved to the appropriate site, if one exists).
Perhaps people are being too aggressive with the downvote and not trying to fix questions to make them viable. Or perhaps these are questions that can't be reasonable fixed to find a place here. I do hope that people aren't downvoting questions that can be fixed or edited, especially shortly after they are asked, but I'm not sure there's any way to be sure.
I do hope that people aren't downvoting questions that can be fixed or edited Well, looking at the second last paragraph of the top-voted answer here, clearly they are.
Jan 2, 2012 at 9:19
First of all, we need to stop confusing the question of "are we scaring off new users" with the question of "are liberal downvotes good".
Obviously we are scaring off new users. I don't think there should be any debate about that. Heck, I've been here for over a year and I've only asked two questions here because I'm afraid of the down votes.
As for whether or not this is a good thing, it isn't. Sure downvoting has benefits, but they don't outweigh the problems that they cause when they're done as often as they are now.
Cons of downvotes:
Pros of downvotes:
You could probably list a few more pros that I might have missed, but there's not a chance that they'll ever outweigh the cons.
Downvotes are socially damaging. It makes a lot more sense to leave a comment on the question either asking for elaboration or clarification, or linking to the FAQ and/or voting to close.
Are we scaring off new users?"
Yes, of course we are. You have a burning question, you ask it, it gets down-voted and closed... you think what a bunch of jerks I don't need them.
What can we do to improve the situation?
This is a Q&A site with a social component, not a Social site with a Q&A component. The down-votes and closures are imperative to ensure the quality of the questions and answers, we leave that alone.
So what does that leave? LOTS:
Lower the barriers of entry: Make it easier for new users to understand what the site is about, how it should and should not be used. This is a hard problem and I see continuous improvements here - kudos to the staff. Leave a suggestion on meta if you think of something good.
Edit: If you take that burning question and alter it so that it meets their needs and the needs of the site you create a good question, help the user get an answer, and help them understand the site better. There are a few people that do this often, thank you!
Comment (Nicely): If you have the time leave a comment about your vote or edit. BUT, The votes and edits are the most important part of the process so don't let your lack of commenting time stop you from cleaning house. I know some of you do this and the mods do more than anyone (thank you mods!)
Flag: Is there a comment where someone is being a jerk to a new user? Flag that thing and get it out of here. It happens and there are some users that do this regularly, I'm sure I'm not the only one that checks their other activity for things to flag when I come across them.
Think of new badges and ways to earn reputation to reward the items above and anything else that you can think of, drop these suggestions on meta.
I think part of the problem is that it's not obvious what this site is about so new users end up asking 'bad' questions. This results in a lot of downvoting and closed or migrated questions.
The solution is to either allow a broader range of questions or clarify what the site is about.
If someone is going to down vote something, at the very least give a reason why? Some questions can be questionable so it's hard to figure out what is wrong with the question so some feedback would be nice.
Are we scaring off new users?
No we are not.
It's just how the system works, bad questions get down votes. Whether some of them get closed or not is irrelevant, closed doesn't necessarily mean bad. Up and down votes is how we comment on a post's quality, and close votes are how we denote a question outside the scope of the site. Different things, that may sometimes overlap, but not always.
There is a very simple reason more and more people come here for help, the system works. You can't please everybody, obviously, today is just a bad day. I've also noticed, some time before you did. I've went through all the questions, and I'm fairly confident that all down votes are justified, and happy that there are some helpful comments that guide askers on how to ask better questions.
I don't know if there's an actual problem, but if there is I'd say it's more that new users don't read the guidelines as careful as they should or that the guidelines aren't as clear as we think.
Nevertheless, the "why the down votes?" question is a wrong one, a better one would be "why no upvotes?". Down votes, as is everything, are peer reviewed, it takes just one up vote to cancel out one down vote - or five down votes, reputation wise.
Would you rather I said nothing and just abandoned the site never to return? No, but you shouldn't make decisions like that based on what I or anyone else may think. Personally I would prefer if people didn't use comments just to express frustration, and instead answer with suggestions on how to improve things. But that's just me, feel free to ignore me.
I think downvotes on questions (and answers) improve the quality of stackexchange sites. It probably does scare off some users but the ones who can't see what was wrong with their questions and ask better ones - those are the people whose absence adds value. I looked at a couple of the questions in your screen shot, and it might have occurred to me to ask them but I would have thought it thru and not asked.
Yes.
I suspect that stackoverflow has so many newly asked questions that it is: hard to find questions you (know enough about and) can answer, hard to find similar questions that might have been answerd in the past, as well as previously asked similar questions go unanswered. This forum has a lot less traffic (in the form of new questions). One of the questions I was looking at here, belonged on SO, but while I was downloading the SDK for the answer to verify it was where the asker should look for their answer, the question was downvoted and closed.
This forum has a lot less traffic (in the form of new questions). Yeap but it's not a replacement for SO. If people knowingly ask off topic questions here, because somehow they feel they won't get answers on SO, that's blatant abuse. The two sites may belong to the same network but have distinct and different scopes. And neither of them is a "forum". One of the questions I was looking at here, belonged on SO ... the question was downvoted and closed. So what? Flag the question for moderation attention and ask for it to be migrated. Downvotes don't follow the migration.
I think maybe we are being a bit too aggressive is down-voting questions, particularly for new users.
I've checked in a few times recently, and decided not to participate because the first page features questions that have mainly been closed, migrated or downvoted.
What can we do to improve the situation?
I think it's partly to do with improving questions before destroying them, and partly to do with ensuring that newcomers are aware of the site's scope.
Are we scaring off new users?
The moderators have access to the analytics tools that can answer that question.
I don't think we are. However, personally, I don't down-vote anything. Instead I try to find the good stuff and vote it up. I know the first time one of my questions was down-voted didn't feel very good and I guess when people see no up-votes on their question they will get the message eventually.
And if a question is really bad and/or doesn't belong on the site, I just flag it appropriately. I have also been trying to (time permitting) leave a comment to point the OP in the right direction, if I can't improve the question myself through suggesting an edit.
I actually kind of wish there was an option on the flag dialog à la "Do you want to leave a comment notifying the OP of this flag?" with a kindly worded comment template to make this easier.
with a kindly worded comment template to make this easier If you make this a feature request, I'll upvote it.
I have been hanging around SE for some time now, waiting to get the hang of it before I express any opinions.
I suppose that there is a philosophy behind SE: this is a place where someone will come if they have a specific question to which they want to get a specific, quick, and if possible definitive, answer. It is not a site for debates. If someone wants a debate, they can always go to a forum.
Once this philosophy has been decided upon, (and I believe it has, hasn't it?) the course of action is clear: if the question is not suitable for SE, it should be booed, downvoted, closed, deleted, obliterated and forgotten.
However, it seems as if the vox populi suggests otherwise. There seems to be a huge number of people who will ask unsuitable questions, and also people who are happy to answer, if they are quick enough, before the questions get closed.
So, let me suggest something: create forums, and move questions unsuitable to SE there. Also, if a question suitable for SE gets posted on the forums, bring it to SE. This way, you would be keeping everyone happy. You would not be alienating people who failed to read the entire FAQ and get a clear understanding of "what SE is all about" before daring to ask their (in their mind, undoubtedly:) innocent question.
The whole point is not let this degrade to a forum... And that's precisely why I suggested that separate forums be created. So that the degradation can be kept separate and at the same time people do not get alienated. It is simple business sense: if you specialize in selling various different varieties of coffee, and you pride in the awesome smell of coffee that entices customers to buy, and yet you notice lots of people stop by asking "do you sell any tea?" well, you should take it as a hint to open up a tea store next door. A separate tea store, right next door!.
Jan 2, 2012 at 14:17
Forums could act like a release valve, although some of the tension regarding downvotes/closevotes will disappear, I think it will quickly be replaced by an horde of people nagging because their posts got "relegated" to forums. Chat is a pretty good alternative for casual conversations, but people tend to ignore it and always go for the exposure of the main site. Unless a forum can be perceived as equally important as the main site, we'll be opening a very big can of worms.
I'm in the "there no such thing as a bad question" campWell, care to explain those 12 down votes that show in your profile?How do Find my downvotes?Through your profile page, of course I can only see the total sums, not individual votes. Here, see mine (bottom right of the page).