Post History

There are many possible reasons for downvotes.

A *single* downvote just means that someone didn't like the post; disagreed with it; felt (justified or not) that it was wrong; difficult to read; showed a lack of research; or any of a phletora of other possible reasons, some of which are going to vary between different communities and from one person to the next.

On any platform where posts can be voted on in both directions, there are always going to be posts that are voted on the "wrong" way. I know it's easy to just say, but you shouldn't take that personally. You might have received downvotes on all three of your questions in short succession; I checked, and they were quite similar. It's possible that someone simply saw on the front page that they were posted in short succession by a new user, checked out all of them, and felt similarly about all three of them. It probably wouldn't take many minutes for someone to reach that conclusion, which would make the votes appear to be in short succession even if the posts were independently voted on.

Now, if one's posts consistently receive *multiple* downvotes each, that might be cause for some concern. However, that does not *necessarily* translate to some variation of "I'm right and you're wrong, you just need to learn why I am right".

There have been numerous discussions on Some Other Q&A network that downvoters should be required to disclose the reason for a downvote. There are numerous problems with such proposals, not least that they require that the voter identifies themselves publicly (while they may prefer to remain anonymous), the possibility of ending up in an argument about why that vote shouldn't have been cast or should have been different, and that there's no way to programmatically determine whether any "reason" for a downvote is the *actual* reason for that downvote. If someone *wants* to explain a vote in more detail, nothing prevents them from leaving a comment on the post when voting as it is.

I have received *numerous* downvotes on posts here and elsewhere. Sometimes people will say why; sometimes not. If there's no comment clearly associated with a downvote, I generally try to look over the post with a critical eye to see if there's anything about it that I might be able to improve, make a better argument about, clarify, or otherwise change for the better. If I can't find that, and the user who voted doesn't say why they voted the way they did, there's little I can do, so I mostly don't lose any sleep over it. Yes, it stings a little for a moment, but in the end, it's really just Imaginary Internet Points.