> How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research?
The guidelines say "shows research" - hover over the downvote arrow on StackOverflow and read the tooltip - so who knows how many? That said, you're discussing it for you writing a well researched question, but the META arguments are usually for the thousands of "give me the codez pls" homework dumps which get filtered out before most people see them, because the downvotes put them into the review queues and effectively cause them to be filtered.
> the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist
SO have not changed this policy, despite lots of feedback, for years and years. Shouldn't we assume they have good reasons even if we don't know what they are?
"we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming."
The users of a library are not the book authors. The feeling of the book authors about the reviews on their books doesn't come into the design of a library, for one example. So maybe we do know what their reasons are - their actions say they bring in a 'welcoming' policy before they change the downvotes.
> How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable?
You said "high-rank users will be more accountable for their behaviour [which is] being snarky asses", that is very different from "every downvote should be explained".
> You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people.
I have argued the same thing on HN before, downvotes is a terrible UI design for SO. But they are the design, and here I'm arguing that should be respected.
The guidelines say "shows research" - hover over the downvote arrow on StackOverflow and read the tooltip - so who knows how many? That said, you're discussing it for you writing a well researched question, but the META arguments are usually for the thousands of "give me the codez pls" homework dumps which get filtered out before most people see them, because the downvotes put them into the review queues and effectively cause them to be filtered.
> the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist
SO have not changed this policy, despite lots of feedback, for years and years. Shouldn't we assume they have good reasons even if we don't know what they are?
"we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming."
The users of a library are not the book authors. The feeling of the book authors about the reviews on their books doesn't come into the design of a library, for one example. So maybe we do know what their reasons are - their actions say they bring in a 'welcoming' policy before they change the downvotes.
> How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable?
You said "high-rank users will be more accountable for their behaviour [which is] being snarky asses", that is very different from "every downvote should be explained".
> You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people.
I have argued the same thing on HN before, downvotes is a terrible UI design for SO. But they are the design, and here I'm arguing that should be respected.