Re^4: Can I please have multiple downvotes per (certain monk's) posts.

My experience on Stack Overflow is quite different.

I do frequently find that if I start on Google and pick a Stack Overflow item from it, I often find an answer or a cluebat -- and about half the time, they're heavily downvoted and closed due to being "off topic".

Asking the question on Stack Overflow directly is a mixed bag. Most of the time nobody will take the time to answer a difficult question. I am given to understand, after reading many blog articles, that it's part of the problem with the SO culture -- it's all about the votes, so people only take the time to answer something where they can provide a fast answer and get lots of votes.

And the "community" there is apt to go downvote a lot of nodes by anyone where they found one thing worth downvoting, which is reprehensible school-children level behavior.

So I'm hesitant to change anything we're doing differently than Stack Overflow, because the bullying behavior here is limited to a handful of noisy accounts, whereas on SO it seems to be the order of the day, every day.

My inescapable conclusion is this: While we might be able to improve on what we have, we're definitely doing enough things better than SO that, by and large, they should not be our role model, but rather, the other way around.

Comment on Re^4: Can I please have multiple downvotes per (certain monk's) posts.

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Re^5: Can I please have multiple downvotes per (certain monk's) posts. by Laurent_R (Canon) on Jun 21, 2015 at 20:13 UTC
Thanks for your comment, marinersk. I am really no fan of Stack Overflow, I find it messy for a start, and I share your reservations, although a bit confusedly, I would not have been able to express them as clearly as you did. I certainly not advocating that PM should follow SO's model, I think that we have a different culture. I have never posted anything there, be it a question or an answer, and I doubt that I will ever do so. My only point about SO was that it was useful, when blindly "googling" on a specific technical problem, especially on a problem where I have really little knowledge, to see upfront the rating of the various answers, even though such rating does not necessarily say it all. But, at least, if the answer has been significantly down voted, I know I should be careful about the answer, and, conversely, if it has a high rating, then the answer might probably be worth attention on my part. That was my sole and only point. The only thing I sort of dislike about the current voting system at PM, is that I would need to up- or down- vote a post to figure out how other monks have assessed a given post. Sometimes, I would just like to know. But, as I said before, I know that seeing upfront the reputation might induce a sheep-like behavior. There is trade-off here, no solution is perfect.	[reply]
Re^6: Can I please have multiple downvotes per (certain monk's) posts. by Anonymous Monk on Jun 21, 2015 at 20:17 UTC
Laurent_R, you can always sort nodes by reputation ... Note ordering: you may choose to see threads either in chronological order or by their reputation.	[reply]