What is the idea of downvoting a question?

Question

I mean sometimes I like ask question about not important content, by example: About the history of a NPC.

Is really fair make downvote just because you dont like or dont care?

I mean when the question have the "Based opinion", dont need be necesary have apply a downvote on it.

Answer 1

My two cents on this:

A downvote on a question may mean a variety of things. Strictly technical, it may mean that a question is not well-researched or very poorly asked, such that it's difficult to even answer it properly. On the other hand, it may also mean that the question simply doesn't seem useful or interesting.

I think the second one is especially important for opinion-based questions. Opinion-based questions were originally meant to be forbidden on this site since they cannot have one, correct answer. Rather, they generate discussions and opinions. We do want the community to moderate those low-quality or not interesting opinion-based questions so that we are not flooded by them.

I monitor votes closely, and so far I haven't seen any mass down-voting from any specific user. I've seen though, that down-votes are only rarely followed by a comment explaining the vote. I think we can improve in this area, by maybe implementing a hint that shows up after a user downvotes a question. Something like "Hey, you downvoted this question. Consider leaving a comment explaining how this post can be improved."

Comments

The idea of comment is good choice, because at the end when I read "On the other hand, it may also mean that the question simply doesn't seem useful or interesting." I read "stop asking questions do I want get an answer and start ask questions who others wanna see".

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Maybe you could do something like the person can only downvote a question if the person leave a comment explaing why it was downvoted and options to improve this question...
Some questions are good but somepeople don’t understand :(

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The idea of allowing everyone to vote as they want is to see how useful (or not useful) the post is. As you can see, there are many posts that have a score of +3 or more votes. This means they are considered useful for at least a few users. However, if a post only receives downvotes, and no one gives any upvotes, then maybe this particular question is not that good and needs to be improved.

Answer 2

Yeah it is sad but usually if the people don’t like or don’t care about your topic/question they downvote... I use the downvote usually for wrong information on answers and for questions not realated to tibia or something that was already posted before.

Don’t give up of your unique questions bc story of this game is relevant and people should care/know more about it ;)

(And maybe it could be good create a tag for rpg/story/mysteries of the game so maybe it will get less downvotes...)

Comments

And that's the good way to use downvote on question, my point is what is the sense of get some type of punishment by ask a valid/legit question?.

If a question has tagged with "Based opinion" the option to give a downvote should be prohibited, if the question does not break any rule or norm.

The funny part, I know exactly who do this (downvote), the new toxic on the page.

Answer 3

I use to downvote when the question do not make any sense, at least to me, or when it is very confuse or it's uncomplete.

Comments

And that's the good way to use downvote on question, my point is what is the sense of get some type of punishment by ask a valid/legit question?.

Answer 4

I actually had the same problem with a legitimate question that had no problem at all, apart from being more directed to new players. It got suddenly a negative vote without any explanation (frankly, I would be ok with a downvote if the person indicates to me what is wrong, because I certainly try to correct the information, even if the downvote stays there forever).

Honestly, I rarely use the downvote feature, since I think that making a thread negative is something worth only to "explicit" poor content. Overall if a question or answer isn't something that makes me care about that or if it is something really basic, I just ignore it.