Timeline for Is it appropriate to downvote answers for the sake of deleting a question?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
36 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:22 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.stackexchange.com/ | |
| Mar 20, 2017 at 9:34 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/ | |
| Jul 9, 2014 at 12:11 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @This in NOT much healthier. Is that the best you could do for a strawman? So much for hoping that you might engage in a constructive discussion. | |
| Jul 9, 2014 at 4:28 | comment | added | user147263 | @BillDubuque If you seek a site for doing others' homework, then consider instead Yahoo! Answers. | |
| Jul 8, 2014 at 12:57 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @This Please keep in mind that this site is meant for math questions at all levels. What you consider a routine answer may be quite nonroutine to a beginner. To some experts, probably almost all of the answers here in their field are routine, but they don't downvote and close to trigger their deletion. If you seek a site restricted by level, then consider instead MathOverflow. | |
| Jul 6, 2014 at 19:10 | comment | added | user147263 | @PedroTamaroff FWIW, I support greater access to one's deleted content. I do not consider posting routine solutions to routine exercises a useful activity, and my votes reflect that. | |
| Jul 5, 2014 at 20:06 | comment | added | Pedro Mod | (...) of my answers are also useful to me, since they record a proof of a fact I might sooner or later forget, or the OP will. I find it much unhealthy to unilaterally delete posts, since you're deleting information (no matter how basic or trivial) that other people do find useful. | |
| Jul 5, 2014 at 20:05 | comment | added | Pedro Mod | @Thisismuchhealthier. It seems to me that you don't trust others to do their work. If you deem some question must be closed, you can do so, and if you want it deleted, you can vote to delete it. But this is a community forum, so it is logical that people frown upon gaming the system to achieve unilateral deletions and whatnot. It seems unfair, too, that people which are giving some of their time to post useful solutions (cf. the questions deleted by community) get their posts downvoted (when the downvote is clearly not called for, except to delete the post) and subsequently deleted. Many (...) | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 23:14 | comment | added | user147263 | Bill, Michael: There isn't a point in discussing whether I apply the same standards to my posts as to the posts of others. Nobody is an impartial judge of things they are invested in. This is why mathematicians don't referee their own papers. If anyone feels I posted something I shouldn't have, they are very welcome to downvote, VTC, and/or vote to delete. In extreme cases, maybe even leave a comment -- though I much prefer not to have unnecessary pings in my inbox. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 19:53 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | @Bill, if you want less things deleted, vote more. This is just one user. If he can delete with a single downvote, this means that the answers could not have score higher than $1$. If at least two people would vote, then at least two people are required for an automatic deletion to occur (not to mention five for the closure). If you are going to complain that you better spend your time writing answers than reading and voting other people's answers, then perhaps you should consider the case that most of what gets deleted is not something you consider worth voting, and thus saving. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 17:52 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @quid That was not clear from what you wrote prior, esp. since I thought you had 10k+ here, but it is not here, but instead MO where you are 10k+. That's the source of the misunderstanding. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 17:42 | comment | added | quid | @BillDubuque Given that I mentioned explicitly in an earlier comment that even notified you (albeit in a part not directed at you) that "I cannot see the threads" I am wondering which one of us two does not pay attention. :-) | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 17:33 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @quid Alas, I see now that you don't have enough rep to browse the deleted questions (10K tools). This is another problem with this campaign (and the design of the SE platform). Users can be tricked into triggering a supermod Community deletion and there is no way for them to even see that this happened, because it requires very high rep to see these things. This is very poor system design. There should be checks and balances at all levels, so that users at each level can see the effects of their actions. The current design violates fundamental design principles, enabling such abuses/attacks. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 17:29 | comment | added | quid | @BillDubuque What precisely are you referring to when you say that J.L. elaborated on the remark in the sense you claim? [It can't be just that he said it is good to have the discussion.] Also, you keep saying everyone should browse the deleted question. To repeat a question just ask: How can I do this? Also, when will you provide the many examples of multiple downvotes you claimed to exist and that I asked about? | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 17:24 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @quid Thanks for confirming that you have not even bothered to read important context. Now I understand why most of your comments do not seem to pertain to the matters at hand. If you read further you'll find that Jyrki elaborated on the remark, expressing later doubts. In any case, I urge everyone to make your own decision on such matters, by browsing the many deleted useful answers, now in the hundreds - soon to be thousands. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 17:17 | comment | added | quid | @BillDubuque "Any user can look at the many examples given here[..]" How can I do this? You do realize the examples are deleted. But then "[...] the evidence brought up does not convince me. I clicked throught the five links given here as well as the five links in Bill's answer. Let me simply state that I'm not gonna shed any tears for the lost threads. Their removal is IMVHO closer to good housekeeping rather than loss of valuable content. – Jyrki Lahtonen" is good enough for me not to worry. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 16:49 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @quid Nonsense. Any user can look at the many examples given here and see for themselves precisely what is being orchestrated behind the scenes in a very covert manner. To me, this is by far the most unethical behavior that I have ever seen on the site (which includes the time when I was a moderator, which opens one eyes to all sorts of abuses). It is also, by far, the most damaging, with even greater potential for such if it is not stopped. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 16:47 | comment | added | quid | @BillDubuque This the community against one user rhetoric while sort of popular here really does not hold water. The community decides by having assigned as status to the question one that results in deletion. That this mainly happened by non-action does not alter this fact. If you consider the criteria for autdeletion as flawed file a feature request. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 14:11 | comment | added | Michael Greinecker Mod | @BillDubuque My comment was only meant to adress the issue whether the user in question applies the same standard used for downvoting to the questions they choose to answer. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 14:09 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @Michael Which is, no doubt the same reason motivating many users who answer such questions. It should be up to the community to decide the value of such answers - not one user. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 9:05 | comment | added | Michael Greinecker Mod | @Bill It seems this user answers questions without much context if they add in a useful way to the knowledge repository of MSE. That is not my standard, which is more restrictive, but I certainly see a difference to the downvoted questions and answers that were given as examples. | |
| Jul 1, 2014 at 5:46 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | @Bill, maybe so, but in the meantime...? | |
| Jun 30, 2014 at 18:02 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @T.Bongers The correct way to fix this is to design much better filtering tools, so that users see only the type of questions that they like. This is not rocket science. It could easily be implemented. | |
| Jun 30, 2014 at 17:42 | comment | added | user61527 | I agree with you that there is a tremendous amount of junk on the site, and truly terrible questions that should be closed. The issues of camps 2 and 3 have led to a serious decline in site quality recently. But going on a one-person crusade to fix this, via (what I consider to be) improper and misleading downvotes, is not the correct response. You should make an effort to build a community consensus about this issue, instead of carrying this out unilaterally and with absolutely zero review by other users. | |
| Jun 30, 2014 at 17:24 | history | edited | user147263 | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 393 characters in body |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 20:37 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @quid I very rarely vote to close, and not for those reasons. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 20:34 | comment | added | quid | @BillDubuque so vote to close them :-) | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 20:31 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @T.Bongers Another point worth noting: most of the recent answers given by this user are to questions missing context, motivation, etc. exactly the types of questions that he seems to be deleting. Apparently his quality standards do not apply to questions that contain his own answers. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 20:27 | comment | added | user159761 | as a member of the lower (working) class I appreciate your work, keep going and clean this up! may the force be with you | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 18:14 | comment | added | user61527 | Honestly, I find the way in which you use the site to be extremely harmful. Although you do contribute good answers, you have never once taken a positive voting action, but rather seem to spend the vast majority of your time working to remove content. There's a serious difference between voting to close an old low-quality question, and deleting all the (good and bad) answers that go with it. That's why deletion votes are one of the very last privileges granted based on reputation. Your thousands of downvotes, many of which are independent of quality, create an air of negativity here. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 16:32 | comment | added | user61527 | @BillDubuque Indeed, and it appears that I am (once again) the target of coordinated downvoting, including against the question Healthier has linked to. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 15:15 | comment | added | Bill Dubuque | @T.Bongers There was no explanation in the the prior thread for the reasons behind this campaign, which includes $2575$ downvotes and $0$ upvotes cast in the $59$ days since this account was created. Hence, probably, there will be no explanation here too. This is certainly not "much healthier". It is the most nonconstructive activity that I've seen since the inception of the site. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 15:07 | comment | added | user61527 | @GerryMyerson Indeed, and my comment was a bit poorly worded. I am interested in the justification that Healthier would provide, but didn't see any of that here - rather, the link to a comment of appreciation that I left is completely irrelevant. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 5:55 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | @T.B, "community opinion" is the sum of the opinions of individual community members (perhaps with some weighting), and Dr. Healthier is giving her opinion that the practice you object to is appropriate. As I write this, Healthier's opinion has 3 downvotes and no upvotes, so maybe you are beginning to get some idea of community opinion. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 3:38 | comment | added | user61527 | I didn't link to that answer (although it was the most recent inspiration for this question) because I wanted my question to be about general mores, not about my particular posts; and although I greatly appreciate your high-quality answer to my recent question, I completely fail to see its relevance to the question I've posed here. I was aware that this is one of the actions you regularly carry out, but I didn't name you in the original post - again, I'm asking about community opinion, not about the appropriateness of actions taken by individual users on specific questions. | |
| Jun 29, 2014 at 3:33 | history | answered | user147263 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |