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Do we need more specific up/down vote reasons for Software Development community?
The help center includes a rather generic (it's the same for all communities) article about voting.
Recently a user flagged a question asking why it had received so many downvotes. While flagging is not for this type of issue, this made me wonder if users are aware of how upvote and downvote are supposed to work and what they mean for Software Development community.
Should we have a more clear and concise way of conveying the information about upvoting and downvoting?
As a reference, I like how SE network shows concise tooltips for each of the two actions:
For questions
- Upvote - This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear
- Downvote - This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear of not useful
For answers
- Upvote - this answer is useful
- Downvote - this answer is not useful
Not sure how it would be better from a UX perspective, but replacing the computed score with such tooltips might provide more value.
2 answers
I agree that these buttons should have tooltips explaining what the buttons are for. That would be far more useful than showing the result of a simple calculation on the displayed votes, and seems like a simple change to make.
Making this site configurable would be ideal, but even a "this question is useful and clear" would be better than the status quo.
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I prefer the current way.
Regarding tooltips
Experience shows that tooltips can survive a lot of time being obsolete. In SO in meta they have "This answer is useful" and "This answer is not useful". But that is not really what it means in meta there. It is ok to downvote if you disagree while thinking that the answer was useful in an ongoing discussion. Though, yes, we could do better.
Are these tooltips going to help the flagger know why they got their downvotes? Unlikely, they should ask in comments.
A size fits all is hard. Do all questions really need to show research effort?
Regarding an extra system of reasons
There will be no end to the reasons that need to be added. And when the list is large enough most people won't bother looking for the right one.
We already have a system. Comments. There is a concern discussed elsewhere about public criticism being hard to swallow some times. But I think comments are the way to go and the flagger should be encouraged to comment asking for reasons. Themselves being the ones asking for them they should hopefully be more receptive to criticism.
Sure, some times "Why was this downvoted?" actually means "curse, why, insult, something worse". But no system can really change that.
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