I am a little bit disappointed about the anonymous downvotes. Any guy might do that without too much trouble and effort, however answering a question means help for others and return the favour for answers you get.

Anyway I responded to an initial question of a guy, my answer solved the problem that he had in the stack trace, then edited the question and someone downvoted me.

It is because I added a comment like this :

"would be nice to appreciate others effort :) – 8 hours ago "

For questions that I put others asked me to vote for their effort

"has this answered your question or is there more I can do to have you check the green checkmark?"

I don't find it fair to receive downvotes when your answer helped the person who asked...

What do you think?

TO be clear:

I agree with downvotes.... but i would like to learn from mistakes ! Just to understand when i was wrong and why ,so i can correct myself !

So downvotes with a small comment would be nice to have!

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Downvotes are part of life on Stack Overflow. Sometimes they don't seem to have any reason. Deal with it and move on - life's too short. –  Oded Sep 13 '12 at 18:21
Lame dup about downvotes. –  Drise Sep 13 '12 at 18:21
And yes, downvotes on Meta are different, before you complain. –  Oded Sep 13 '12 at 18:21
I think the answer lacks explanation... –  jmfsg Sep 13 '12 at 18:27
the initial question was about the stack trace... –  Cris Sep 13 '12 at 18:28
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closed as too localized by jmfsg, Bart, Aaron Bertrand, GEOCHET, Ben Brocka Sep 13 '12 at 18:34


2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

I think there are plenty of good reasons to allow anonymous down-votes - most importantly to prevent vengeful behavior (we have some pretty high-profile users who don't take criticism well).

What I'd like to see is a way to comment anonymously on your down-vote, so the user still has an opportunity to learn about the flaws in their answer, but that idea has been shot down as well.

No system is going to be able to force users to comment on their down-vote. If you require text entry, they'll enter gibberish. If you require a selection from a list, they'll just pick the first one. Are you better off with this "information"? No.

This has been discussed here ad nauseum. As @Oded stated, just move on. Haters gonna hate, no matter how good your answer is, and if you post good answers your up-votes will make any down-votes statistically insignificant. Also remember that we are talking about some non-tangible number on a web site.

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i just edited the answer with my opinion –  Cris Sep 13 '12 at 18:28
It doesn't seem that your answer has solved the problem for the OP (at least not yet). I also don't think you should assume the OP has down-voted you, or that you should pressure the OP to up-vote you (especially in this case, where the problem clearly hasn't been solved). Finally, bringing the question here has likely triggered a new influx of votes on your answer (which may be a good thing, but probably not). –  Aaron Bertrand Sep 13 '12 at 18:33
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First, I think you have no real basis to guess who or why they voted down on your recent question. Don't be too quick to try to guess, even if you think the timing suggests something.

Second, it's no one's business but their own whether and how they vote. You should not attempt to instruct or bug people about that.

Third, that other person was talking about you 'accepting' their answer - and that, too, should not happen. Just like voting is up to the person voting, Accepting is up to the person accepting.

There are rare cases where it might be OK to teach someone how to vote or accept, but that is entirely separate from asking them to vote/accept your answer, which is always inappropriate.

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