Suggestion: Add "reason" for Downvotes

Question

Hello!

The time I has been here on this site I could see how some questions and answer got downvotes, but mostly of the time users don't add a comment and the reason of it. IMO for a better feedback and understanding for the users, should be "needed" add a comment with the description/reason of their downvote, like it happens when we close a question. I believe this will be good, is cuz then we as users can improve the way we questioned or answers, so can have that feedback that are not receiving now.

Comments

Others and myself have already suggested this here: https://meta.tibiaqa.com/1580/how-to-approach-downvoting-and-content-quality?show=1580#q1580 and here: https://meta.tibiaqa.com/1709/hints-for-posts-that-received-a-down-vote?show=1711#a1711 Needless to say I agree with you.

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Thanks you, Shawtay! I didnt know about those post, thanks for shared them!

Answer 1

Hello everyone!

Thank you for raising your concerns about this. I understand that receiving downvotes and not knowing why can be frustrating. I don't want us to move in the direction where all downvotes require a written explanation, however, I certainly would like to educate and encourage users to comment their downvotes more.

Based on our current experiences, many of such comments currently result in a pushback from the user who received the downvote. What's worse, some of such users even seek revenge - they start to downvote posts of users who submitted the downvote and dared to explain why they downvoted - not everyone is understanding and handles criticism well. To mitigate this a little bit, we implemented the ability to leave anonymous comments some time ago (for now you have to log out and leave the comment for it to be anonymous, there's no switch yet). Long story short - I can understand the users who do not want to reveal themselves.

In order to encourage and remind users that it's a nice thing to explain why a post was downvoted, I have added a reminder whenever a user downvotes a post:

• A message is displayed that encourages to explain the downvote
• A comment input under the post is automatically brought up

I certaintly don't think this is a game-changer and solution to all the problems with down-voting. I do hope however, that this is a good first step towards building a culture of giving and receiving constructive criticism without unnecessary anger, pushbacks, or revenge.

As always, looking forward to your thoughts!

Comments

Much appreciated

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Hello Ellotris! Thanks for take use your time to watch this out, I appreciate that.

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Hello! I was thinking and ofc IDK how difficult it is, but It's possible add comments like we do when we flag a question/answer? So users can explain the reason of the downvote?

Answer 2

Yea, I think it should be somehow required. I know that there is a new tool visibly here:

... which shows info that we can improve our answers, but to be honest I'm sure that quite a lot of downvotes are given without any reason. Even if we correct our answers then nobody unvote it :P

Maybe due to this small requirement ppl would stop give downvotes because of no reason.

Comments

Exactly, that's my point. I believe if people have to write a review of the downvote they would be more "critical" when they decide to downvote and also will decrease those downvotes given "for free" without a tecnical point of view.

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On that question you're showing - If you're still downvoted it's not from me as I removed it long ago when you fixed it - so not sure who downvoted you.

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Yeah I know, I just wanted to present this tool and the downvote was the newest I got, so the easiest to find xD