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What we have now is situations like this. Most people who will read this know that ewwwwwwhite's answers are generally awesome. But fully 1/4 of them only have one vote, and on this particular page, 1/3 of the questions were upvoted by the same person! Maybe not all of these deserve 10 votes, but certainly a few of them deserve more than one. Where are the rest of you?

Obviously, I think about voting a lot. What drew me to SF in the first place was the voting system: the value in SF (and other SE sites) is that it's easy for people to vote good content up and bad content down. And when you get a group of similarly-minded people doing the voting, the really good stuff will quickly stand out, and the crap will sink to the bottom and quietly disappear.

What we have now is situations like this. Most people who will read this know that ewwwwwwhite's answers are generally awesome. But fully 1/4 of them only have one vote, and on this particular page, 1/3 of the questions were upvoted by the same person! Maybe not all of these deserve 10 votes, but certainly a few of them deserve more than one. Where are the rest of you?

Obviously, I think about voting a lot. What drew me to SF in the first place was the voting system: the value in SF (and other SE sites) is that it's easy for people to vote good content up and bad content down. And when you get a group of similarly-minded people doing the voting, the really good stuff will quickly stand out, and the crap will sink to the bottom and quietly disappear.

• Questions with no answers and negative scores are automatically deleted. This is probably the most important reason for downvoting: the crap will go away automatically if it's downvoted.
• Although people complain about downvotes without comments, they can't accuse anyone who does it of being mean or snarky, and if they complain on a meta site, they'll get the official answer I mentioned above. They also can't take it as personally because they don't know who did it.
• Another consideration might be that comments can be deleted pretty much on a whim, because by definition comments are not considered valuable content. So if you're going to expend any effort in making the site better, comments are a less permanent way of doing it.

• Questions with no answers and negative scores are automatically deleted. This is probably the most important reason for downvoting: the crap will go away automatically if it's downvoted.
• Although people complain about downvotes without comments, they can't accuse anyone who does it of being mean or snarky, and if they complain on a meta site, they'll get the official answer I mentioned above. They also can't take it as personally because they don't know who did it.
• Another consideration might be that comments can be deleted pretty much on a whim, because by definition comments are not considered valuable content. So if you're going to expend any effort in making the site better, comments are a less permanent way of doing it.

The official rule, repeatedly discussed and confirmed on Meta.SO is that you don't have to comment when you downvote. It's nice to comment if you can point out what's wrong with a question, but it's optional (no matter how many people post "Why the downvote?" comments on their questions).  

(I learned today that if you're logged in to Amazon, you can search for a specific page w/in a book. This is from the 2nd Dilbert book published, I think it and the third one are still the best.)

(And in case you've forgotten why this cartoon is here, recall that I started this essat with: "Admittedly, when it comes to voting, I'm a bit like the porcupine in the Dilbert cartoon..." )

The official rule, repeatedly discussed and confirmed on Meta.SO is that you don't have to comment when you downvote. It's nice to comment if you can point out what's wrong with a question, but it's optional (no matter how many people post "Why the downvote?" comments on their questions).

(I learned today that if you're logged in to Amazon, you can search for a specific page w/in a book. This is from the 2nd Dilbert book published, I think it and the third one are still the best.)

(And in case you've forgotten why this cartoon is here, recall that I started this essat with: "Admittedly, when it comes to voting, I'm a bit like the porcupine in the Dilbert cartoon..." )