I'm a member for 10 months in the EE.SE but I think we still have a problem controlling the voting system! For example, look at Olin's answer in this question:
How many LEDs can you chain in serial?
It seems someone down-voted his answer. In my opinion the same behaviour can disturb super users like Olin and we have to avoid to such behaviour. So I think we have to control the up- and down-votes. Now my question is HOW!? How can we help moderators to avoid such behaviour?
Judging by their comments, silent downvotes do seem to be the one thing that disturbs high reputation users the most.
- Whoever downvoted this, what exactly do you think is wrong, misleading, or badly written? Silent downvotes do a disservice since we don't know what you object to, and the misconception could just as well be on your end.– Olin Lathrop
- Uncommented downvote, yay?– Passerby
- Person who down-voted: It is proper form to state your reason, because I believe my question is stated in a completely suitable manner.– boardbite
But it shouldn't bother them that much really. Since there's no accompanying comment to counter, there's no need to acknowledge the downvote.
In the end, its just a kind of mild defacement used by people who aren't able to express themselves in a better way. But I agree with @Dave in that there's no need to control that behaviour since it's so marginal and the impact of lost reputation is so minimal.
PS. There are a few other posts already on our Meta site about the subject:
I am not a high-reputation member. I have had answers down-voted within SE.
I am more interested in why my contributions were down-voted than who down-voted. With no feedback, I have no way to improve.
I think down-votes could remain anonymous as long as the down-voter gives some feedback.
For me, an anonymous comment associated with a down-vote, or an up-voted comment associated with a down-vote are more use than no comment.
I wouldn't make anonymous comments on a down-vote mandatory. However, if folks down-vote silently, I'd value that response less than an anonymous comment, and an anonymous comment less than a comment.
If someone down-votes with nonsense, then I can put that down as a vandal, and ignore it. I might like to be able to ask a moderator to 'wash away' an anonymous comment which is vandalism.
If someone gives feedback that I disagree with, then I can deal with that.
If someone identifies errors I have made, then I would like to know, rather than a silent down-vote.
Whenever I down-vote, I either write comments, or up-vote the comments that expressed my view. I might even feel happier connecting the up-voted comments, or my comments to my down-vote.
To quote from the help center section on downvoting
The up-vote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Down-voting should be reserved for extreme cases. It's not meant as a substitute for communication and editing.
The drive by down voting adversely affects new people of the site disproportionately vs. any high rep user. Those are the people that you should be more concerned about. A cohort that is inflexible and intolerant will eventually mean limited engagement and limited diversity of experience to draw upon as resources.
The anonymous downvoting is not surprising given certain group of users propensity to "Vote to close and down vote them out of existence" approach to things which clearly violates the guidelines but more importantly plants that as a form of acceptable behaviour. If you feel aggrieved by someone, replicating the behaviour anonymously is a natural response I'd think.
I would recommend following those links that Ricardo posted in his writeup. And do take the time to read the responses and comments and also look at the statistics and draw your own conclusions.
I will only add that an unjustified downvote is usually self-defeating.
If I see an unjustified downvote, I will upvote to compensate (even if I might have not voted at all otherwise), and this leaves the recipient with a net +8 rep.
Agonizing over votes and rep is kind of silly anyway. The best way to get high votes and high rep is to answer a really easy question quickly. But those are hardly the most valuable contributions to the site.
Unfortunately malicious or vandalous downvotes are a fact of life here. It's not a huge problem, but it is annoying. The reputation loss is minor, but it's annoying when a good answer gets pushed lower down due to some moron with a chip on his shoulder.
The way to fix this problem is to MAKE DOWNVOTES TRACEABLE. This doesn't keep anyone from casting a downvote, but it would eliminate vandalism and retribution votes. Vandals only work in the shadow of anonymity. I really don't see the downside to this. If you're not willing to stand behind your judgment that something is wrong, misleading, or poorly written, then it's not worth dinging the author for it either.
The current system actually disinsentivises you from explaining what you think is wrong with a answer. For example, I could have silently downvoted Wire for project with 9 volt battery, and then I probably wouldn't have gotten the mysterious downvote to my answer to the same question.
The way this should work is when you click on the downvote arrow, a box should pop up so that you can add a comment. The comment always starts with "Downvoted by xxxx:", which you can't erase, but you can add text afterwards.
Not only would this system give open traceability to all downvotes, but it would let the author know who to ping if he fixes the error. Even better, all downvoters should be automatically notified when the answer is edited. I will undo my downvote if the author fixes the problem and pings me, but few ever do, even when they do edit their post. Sometimes I notice by accident, like when the guy above "fixed" his answer but the result was just as bad.
Here is another example of a silent downvote that is almost certainly from a vandal or some dirtbag with a grudge. Once again, traceability would put a stop to nonsense like this.
In my opinion the same behaviour can disturb super users like Olin and we have to avoid to such behaviourBWHAHAHAHAHAHAH oh the poor babies. \$\endgroup\$