This started out as a discussion over in salesforce.meta.stackexchange (SFSE for short from here on), where I'm the most active.
##The general idea
Downvotingnot really sure if there's any great way to handle things like this, and its prominencebut based on questions & answers, is a tool of the utmost import.
No matter how much you may think that being downvoted shouldn't make you feel bad or be taken personally, there are people who will feel bad or take it personally.
I feel that this is even more likelyAdrian's suggestion I'm trying to besplit this out between the case for new users.
Instead of discouraging people from downvoting new usersquestion (though I think I'll always exercise greater restraint with new users),describing what if there were a way to turn a downvote into an opportunityI'm looking for more engagement?
Things like downvoting, voting to close,) and voting to delete low-quality questions/answers are very fire & forget answer(or set it & forget it, if you have a fondness for a particular USA infomercials). Once you take that action, unless you bookmark the question or keep it open in a tab, chances are pretty slim that you'll ever come back to it.
How can we improve the outcomes of downvotes (with an emphasis on new userspersistent draft(s)?
The goals here are:
- help ease new users into what's still an intimidating landscape
- increase the net score for new users
- overall increase the number of new users that become long-time contributors.
##Possible implementations for general formatting/ Prior Research
- One of the most interesting ideas I came across in seeing whether or not there was already something to tackle this issue was the mentorship experiment. Based on what I've found in meta from the DAG team, this idea seems to have fallen by the wayside. I'm not sure if SFSE (or other SE sites) would have enough active, knowledgeable people to make this work well
- Push a notification to downvoters of a question when the author makes an edit
- Allow users to opt-in to receive notifications after certain actions (leaving a comment, voting to close, voting to delete, some combination thereof) when an edit, comment, or maybe both are made. Notifications could be triggered by author edits/comments.
From the research I did prior to posting this question...
This appears to have been asked before in 2009 with a very positive receiption. It was declined back thencontent, butand concrete suggestions that wouldn't fit well as some of the more recent comments/answers have suggested, perhaps it's time to reconsider in the wake of https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/
Automatically removing downvotes is not a popular solution.
Tweaking the reopen system was previously suggested but, again, the proposition of automatically undoing downvotes is not popularcomment).
Based on Letting receivers of downvotes ask why they got it, automatic, non opt-in notification is problematic. Maybe the problematic bitMy plan here is thatto make this would have been baseda spin on what the OP wants to have done (with the implication that everyone would question downvotes) vs handing more control to the downvoters"sandbox" on codegolf.
Mandating comments to accompany downvotes is a non-starter because it makes an already (comparatively) rare action harder to performstackexchange.com.
(link to some study I remember about how people feel bad about negative messages being sent, and how making I'll accept the negative option more neutral led to more usecurrent revision of the negative option)
##Possible outcomes and side effects
###More opportunity for engagement
If people stop engaging on a post, the game is over.
Keeping people engaged can leaddraft to more people becoming long-term contributors, which is important forkeep it pinned to the long-term healthtop of the answers, and major revisions will see a stack exchange network sitenew "answer" that becomes accepted.
###Discover, and retain##What I'm asking from you, more people who could become valuable contributorsthe viewers at home/work
ThereIf there are people and postsminor corrections that fall through the cracks. This couldshould be a good waymade to address issues of "this post has potentialgrammar, but needs some tweaking".
I don't know if there would be many other good options to address these posts and try to improve quality and encourage new users. Other options may be more work to implementsentence construction, or be excessively obtrusive to the StackOverflow/StackExchange flow
###Not only more engagement, but more timely engagement
The longer aif you've found another meta question sits, the higher the chanceon SO that the response you've already gotten is the response you'll end up with.
All 3 of the suggested solutions wouldyou think should be able to address the issues closer to the time they arise (or toconsidered/addressed in the time they could possiblymeta post I'll be resolved).
###This doesn't necessarily give an advantage to hit & run posting
The idea here is that this is onlymaking, make a shift ofcomment someon the currently accepted answer of the responsibility of posting from the OP to the responder.
#1 and #2 require action from the OP (and my imagining of #3 would involveIf there are major changes that as well), at which point things can be taken into the hands of an experienced contributor who better knows what the community is looking for (and if more work is needed still)
No action from OP = no notification to downvoters.
###Downvoters could be overwhelmed with notifications, or punished for not taking action
An opt-in solution here, like #1 or #3, would mitigate this completely.
The mitigating factor for a solutionyou'd like #2 would be (downvote frequency) *to suggest (edit frequency). There's probably a few queries that could be run to work out some hard numbers for how likely a downvoter would be to receive a notification, but my gut feeling here is that this probability is not likely to be high.
###There arelike a lot of questions/answers that are completely unsalvageable, which would causechange in the SNR to tank
Yestone of a section, there are a lot of extremely low quality posts. Such posts wouldn't take much additional effortchange to ignorethe feature request I'll end up making, certainly less effort than keeping a bookmarkchange in the general strategy/tab and refreshing until you give up. The important thingtack/approach used to me here is thatpresent this would increase discoverability, and give people who are worth it another shot.
###This could be gamed
Wellidea to SO's meta, almost everything can be gamed.etc.. but what if we limited this to "new users" &/or to the Nth question/answer?
"New" users probably stand a lesser chance of knowing the system well enough to game it. Hell), it's common for me to need to tell somethen please contribute a new users to edit their postanswer instead of adding a comment multiple times before they actually get it.
Experienced users are very likely to know how to @mention in a comment.
###What about upvotes on low-quality answers?
I'd argue that's a separate problem, and not one that this request is meant to address.
The point here is that downvoting discourages new users, more active users is a good thing, and how can we make downvoting less Also please include the version number of a death kiss without making it harder to downvote?the current accepted answer in bold, at the top of your answer
