Forum:Why can't we downvote on this forum?

Question

[devenvyas]

Has anyone else here wondered why we cannot downvote responses on this thread?

All (or at least many) of us have had cases where people have made (unhelpful) responses of no contributory value to our threads that ought to be downvoted, but downvoting is not available anywhere on this forum. Anyone know why?

[Istvan Albert]

I missed this thread, in a nutshell we don't have down-votes because down-votes are almost never used the way that they are supposed to be used.

The answers in this thread summarize the rationale.

Answer 1

[John]

Yesterday, I was helping a guy out on StackOverflow with some JavaScript issues. The question was

If n++ and n += 1 are the same, then why does the following give different results in nodejs: a = 1; b = 10; while (a < b) { console.log(a); a++ } a = 1; b = 10; while (a < b) { console.log(a); a+=1 }

The OP received 7 downvotes in about 10 seconds, all saying "this code is exactly the same, you must have mis-typed it wrong". But the OP wasn't wrong. There is a difference between a++ and a+=1. ++ returns the value before the increment. +=1 returns a value after the +1. However, since no one ever does c = a++ or c = a+=1, very few people actually come across this issue.

I added my upvote to the OPs question, putting them at a healthy -6, then gave the solution, and immediately received 3 downvotes all along the lines of "wrong."

StackOverflow is a toxic community. In fact pretty much all of StackExchange is. Even the owners say they hate what it has become, and it's all because of stupid downvotes. When you have downvotes, you provide people with hate in their hearts an API to access your community.

OK not funny guys

[Ram]

I recall this distinction - this is the reason we call a++ a post-increment operator and ++a a pre-increment operator.

[harold.smith.tarheel]

I'm up voting you to -5. Feel better?

[WouterDeCoster]

Score += 1

• And an unrelated line of text because post needed at least 20 characters :-)

Answer 2

[WouterDeCoster]

All (or at least many) of us have had cases where people have made (unhelpful) responses of no contributory value to our threads

Yes, but I firmly belief nobody does that intentional (except spambots which are quickly removed). Everyone is here to learn and is allowed to make not-completely helpful responses. Everyone who wants to help is allowed to do that to the best of their capacity. Errors will quickly be recognized by other people from the community and comments will be made leading to a discussion beneficial to everyone. A misconception can get recognized and opinions can be exchanged.

that ought to be downvoted

No. I'm not sure many people here are in the right position to know for sure when a post has to be down voted. In addition, this would create the side effect that people hesitate to help out of fear of being downvoted. That's not desirable, right? I don't think Biostars needs a culture change, and your proposal would have a huge impact on the helpful and spontaneous reactions that are so eagerly supplied by many active users.

So, for what it's worth, I would like to... downvote your suggestion.

[venu]

+1. Every point makes sense. Further, there might be multiple methods to solve a problem, one may provide a simple onliner, one may provide a script of particular language. Both are useful but people tend to use onliner instead of script, in such case, there are chances downvoting the script. Downvoting clearly reduces the thoughts/ideas put into a problem.

Answer 3

[mikhail.shugay]

Here are a couple of reasons:

1. Ask yourself if you want this forum to turn in a sort of stackoverflow. Count the number of downvotes you'll get for this post from SO perspective, assuming this question was already asked and core users are too conservative to change the voting system.

2. We work in an interdisciplinary field. As bioinformaticians, we have to make this community biologist-friendly, as they constitute a major portion of people who use our software/scripts and interpret results and analysis that we generate either directly or indirectly. Most of questions asked by biologist with little computational background will seem too simple or coming from a completely lack of understanding of whats going on. Our role is to educate them, not downvote.

3. Up-votes reflect the question importance for the community, while down-votes can tell lots of different things such as more information needed/incorrect usage of a software/i firmly believe my software does it better/etc which will not necessary undermine the importance and are better to be expressed with comments and a lack of up-votes.

Answer 4

[harold.smith.tarheel]

Try using the 'search' function for previous discussions of downvote.

[devenvyas]

There was one thread 3.4 years ago, in which a grand total of three people responded including the OP.

[harold.smith.tarheel]

The search function is not great, but a cursory search found:

1. Bringing Back Downvote
2. Suggesting The Removal Of Post Closing
3. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/biostar-central/PpzGhuymvaQ/aIS8ibZ9LoIJ

These threads seem to cover the pros and cons.