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Comments on Give reasons for downvotes.
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Give reasons for downvotes. [closed]
Closed as too generic by Isaac Moses on Aug 25, 2020 at 20:00
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Deleted by interested on Aug 25, 2020 at 20:07
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I placed three questions here and they were all downvoted almost at the same time. That proves to me although not conclusively that they were the same person. I notice this site is not progressing at all. You are not getting questions or answers. I of course withdrew all my questions. For a start I think any downvoter has to give his reasons at least to the moderator. You are not yet big enough and never will be if you just start refusing questions which this in effect is. I asked it on the other site and immediately got a comment to further explain my question. It was then mentioned as having been asked previously and asking me to withdraw it. Again it was downvoted there most likely by the same person who did it here, but the previous time it had been asked it recieved fourteen upvotes. Someone here is playing you up and you did mention you had a troll but youre doing nothing about it. The other site also has a chat which you dont seem to have which is not voted on. At least it gives you a chance to 'talk' in peace. The first way to build up your site is to get people to come and then decide further. You seem to have decided everything in advance before you got people to come and then letting them decide. I would also say you should stop downvoting questions at least till they had some upvotes if you want to increase question traffic and never leave them with just downvotes. I suppose that goes for answers as well. I also have my other reason for saying this which I have already mentioned and wont repeat again here. I am quite prepared to 'bombard' you with questions and answers on condition I am shown common courtesy. I am sure others expect the same. I cant see for the present that you should be going anywhere and it is a pity because if you really wanted you could. It is just a matter of thinking of the people whom you want to join your site I should add that there should be a difference between good questions or answers which are just not written 'properly' and those which are not good. I am quite sure and I suppose others are as well that what I write is good, but I cant always be sure that it isnt written 'properly'. Meaning written in such a way that everyone can understand it. Somehow someone should rewrite it but that should not be a reason for a downvote. You should make a new classification and two kinds of downvote. One where you think it is wrong and one where you cant understand it. Just downvoting because you cant understand it helps no one. Not everyone can understand everything and not everything can be explained to everyone. But if it is correct that means that those who can understand it think so, then it again should not be downvoted. I am an original thinker and my posts will confirm that, that means I make chiddushim and what are called yesodos, I can understand that not everyone is likely to agree to them. But at least I expect they understand them before they dont agree to them.You are not blind to the fact that this site is not getting traffic, but you are deaf to new ideas of increasing it. I have suggested that you only downvote where the post will not result in a negative vote. I see no reason why not, and nothing you have said addresses this. I have already given two reasons for this.If you dont understand I am quite prepared to repeat it in more detail but you would rather this site died than make any improvement however trivial. I wish monica cello would be reading this.I am sure she is interested in keeping this site open whereas no one else seems to be. I can also think of innovations which would make your site better than the other but with your heads in the sand there seems no chance of that. You are resistant to change, and would rather the ship go down which you admit it is doing. A lot of work has been put into the site but you care nothing for that. I will put this into an answer instead of splitting it up into comments or I can put it into the question. I have asked on the site what can be wrong with a dikduk question no answer! I am not new to you, you can see my posts on the other site under the same name.But you prefer to make a no entry here for everyone.Since you named me I will respond. The site is doing well. It's growing. Quality is more important than quantity. I'd like to see more good questions and community engagement to improve ones that are weak and can be fixed.I have suggested how to get more questions which would not decrease quality. So far no one has replied to that. There is another thing which you Monica Cellio may not be aware or. All the others are specialist sites and one has to have an interest in them to belong to them. I have checked the other sites and this one has many, many more downvotes than any others. — interested 2 minutes ago
The latest question on here is what does the talmud say about a certain subject. There is nothing wrong with the question but since the talmud has over 2000 pages one can have 2000 questions like this. I dont consider questions like what does the talmud say, is what viewers really want. They are just too simple to ask and answer. And people expect something different from a site like this. In plain English I dont consider it a quality question although there is nothing wrong with it. I would also like to add that taking posts from SA even though it may be legal I dont consider ethical. To me it is no different than stealing.I notice Racquetball has 44 downvotes on 4 posts. Dont tell me this is normal. I havent bothered looking at the posts but there must be something wrong for someone to amass so many downvotes on four posts. The moderators have a duty to help posters. They cant be doing it if this happens.
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I'm sorry that you had a poor first experience here. Receiving downvotes is never pleasant.
However, there are a few things in your post I'd like to address.
Fundamentally, upvotes and downvotes are a way of determining a post's quality. It has nothing to do with the author.
Of course, quality is a subjective term, so saying that votes are cast based on a post's quality isn't actually very helpful, so let's get a bit into what "quality" means here.
In your addition to this question, you say that if someone cannot understand your post, they should refrain from editing it. A post being unclear is not high quality. If a post is poorly written and people can't get the point, it's going to get downvotes - because that's low-quality.
Quality is determined by a combination of usefulness, accuracy, and presentation.
A post should be useful; i.e., have a point. A post that lacks any reason for why it exists is unlikely to be of any interest to people.
A post should be accurate; the information presented within a post should be correct, sourced, and not based on a false premise. While a question based on a false premise can lead to good answers correcting this false premise, it's best to try to make sure you understand what you're talking about.
And a post should be presented well. This includes formatting, sourcing, and clarity. While there is of course some leniency in this - not everyone has perfect English, for instance, and everyone makes typos - a post that is entirely unclear and not formatted well is difficult to understand, as well as showing a lack of effort on the part of the original poster. (If they can't be bothered to take the time to explain or to format their post, why should someone take the time to answer their question?)
With all this in mind, though, quality is still going to be subjective; everyone can decide how they are determining quality and cast their votes how they want (in a non-abusive manner).
Now, as for the anonymity of votes and requiring a reason...
When people downvote, they're doing it because they think the post is low-quality. That's already providing a reason. If we require people to type in a reason, they're not going to give specific feedback on the post; they'll just write "low quality" or "unclear" or "sdkuyshbakusdv", to make the downvote go through. Requiring a reason for such a basic feature like voting doesn't make much sense if we want to encourage people to actually use the voting feature.
Votes are also currently anonymous to avoid creating instances where people vote in biased ways. "This person downvoted me, so I'll downvote them!" is a situation we want to avoid, as well as the converse (people upvoting the folks who upvoted their posts); we want to make sure that votes stay focused on the post, not the person.
You say that we're not getting much traffic at the moment, and that downvotes will drive away new people who come to post. This is not an invalid point. We don't currently have that much traffic - but we're working on it.
But without a quality-measuring system - which involves downvotes in its current implementation - we'll get more posts, sure... but lower-quality posts.
We don't want to sacrifice quality for quantity. We'd prefer a smaller selection of high-quality posts over a larger selection of low-quality posts, even if that means that the site stays rather small for now.
We currently do not have a built-in chat, unlike Mi Yodeya. However, we do have a Discord server that you can join to discuss the site.
You've made a lot of rather disjointed points here, but hopefully I managed to address your core concerns. I'm happy to answer further requests for clarity in the comments.
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