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Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called "Marginal short answers with links".

  • For the record, I have been using query parameters as suggested here, with the only difference that min value was set -2 instead of 0, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of "community disapproval".

While reviewing posts listed in query results I downvoted some of these ("pulled a Gnat" as they say:). Soon after that, I noticed that many of the posts I DVed popped in Low Quality review queue: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Given that mentioned posts were laying dormant for quite a long time (year or more), it looks like my votes triggered their inclusion into queue. Is that observation correct? If yes, I also would want to understand whether such a dependency of downvotes is intended by queue design?


Update

Two days later I repeated experiment like above and, voila, 8 more posts were added to the queue: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Next day experiment brought yet another 5 posts into the queue: 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

What I noticed in repeated experiments is that queue was populated with posts that got zero score because of my downvote. It looks like quite a reliable pattern of cause-effect.

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  • 1
    for the sake of completeness, there was yet another example besides those listed above, but after pondering on it I decided to edit and undownvote. It wasn't included in the list to keep the question simpler
    – gnat
    Mar 21, 2013 at 11:14

1 Answer 1

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Per my reading of this answer written by SE developer, downvotes increase chances of the post getting into Low Quality queue:

approach to low-quality auto-flagging, by looking for similarities in posts downvoted or flagged as low quality...

It is worth noting that per mentioned answer, upvotes tend to have an opposite effect:

referenced post got 2 upvotes..., so it wouldn't even make it into the low quality queue


Those interested to know how Low Quality queue is expected to work, can refer to respective guidelines:

Guidelines for reviewing Low Quality Posts

Questions appear in the low quality post queue both by algorithm and by flags from users.

Basic workflow

  1. Check if the post can be improved. If it can, by all means Edit it. A typical example are code-only answers, which can benefit from additional explanation about how that code works.

  2. If you think the post is unsalvageable and should be deleted, Recommend Deletion (see common reasons below).

  3. If the post looks good, choose Looks Good. If you are unsure, Skip it...

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