I suggest that when someone votes something down that should leave a comment to justify!
In these way the reason could be a valid one and be used by the user that posted the question/ answers and correct future posts, or the post be better explained or even the vote down be by wrong reasons.
Originally posted to UserVoice anonymously with 5 votes.
I think that "requiring" a comment will result in a lot more trolling and worthless comments. We used to require text in certain fields for our survey & most of the time it was filled out with garbage. Removing that requirement removed all the garbage text.
With requiring comments to down vote we would have to manually delete the garbage, trolls & pointless suggestions. They are going to be negative comments & it's hard to trust in constructive criticism on the internet.
I think it's better to have it be socially enforced (ie if you as a good user down-vote, leave a comment) so that people browsing will see that it's a common thing to do but NOT have it be a requirement to actually do anything. Otherwise we moderators will be spending a lot of time cleaning up garbage comments.
I absolutely agree. If I downvote an answer, it's because it doesn't help. There are some people who give answers that are based on the person's lifestyle- not on the actual problem. As such, I downrank those and tell them why.
I completely agree, the point of a downvote 90% of the time is an answer that won't work, or is inaccurate. To encourage overall learning and such, a comment is justified. I don't believe it should be required, however it should be a suggested convention. Perhaps if when you downvote an answer, something appears asking you to explain your downvote.
Edit: Unless of course others have already downvoted, in which case I see no reason to re-articulate what has already been stated.
It would be preferred for users to write their comments in ways to promote learning. The comments we want on down-votes should be constructively critical. If users are writing negative comments just for the sake of being negative, they aren't contributing to the community, which is annoying. If people are so se
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Down voted because the whole idea of votes is anonymity. If you want to change user behavior, you do it through comments. (how's that for irony)
by Adam Hintz