Why is this another question heavily downvoted?
So if you may know from my last question, I am currently reviewing my existing questions for improvements, to help lift my question ban. I came across yet another question of mine, which has quite a lot of downvotes (I think 4 or 5 downvotes, and 2 upvotes standing at -2 downvotes currently). From the content, it seems that it is a well-organized question, seems to have no duplicates, and also has a valid answer, which is from my own self, that also received a bounty reward from a moderator. Again, people can downvote for any reason, but the amount seems a bit absurd comparing it to the question itself.
My question again is, are the downvotes justifiable comparing it to the question's content (explain how) and is the question actually low-quality?
edited Nov 25, 2022 at 1:07
asked Nov 24, 2022 at 11:58
StrangerStranger
The only time a vote isn't "fair" (in my opinion) is when it targets the user, not the content (this could be due to a voting ring, because the users have had a "disagreement" and downvotes multiple posts, or because they are voting for "friends"). I doubt this question has votes from user targeting.
– Larnu
First, fix the title. It's too long and too specific. Also, "I need" isn't really a question
– Dharman Mod
It's a good question, so I am not sure why it received so many downvotes. But please look at the edit VLAZ made. This and the title could be the main reason.
4 or 5 downvotes is neither "heavily downvoted" or "absurd".
That's also true. My good questions have 10-15 downvotes
You're a mod though, @Dharman, so I wouldn't be surprised if your good questions have many downvotes, and your bad questions are in the negative triple figures. ;)
Thanks for the edits. @Dharman you are right, but I don't remember ever having that many downvotes before, even on obviously bad questions.
– Stranger
you don't even need to be a mod. Just do normal curator stuff, and you'll eventually get revenge downvotes on good questions. It's the inevitable and unavoidable "fuck you" for trying to contribute positively. People just don't respond well to negative feedback, no matter how constructive it's presented. But hey, what can you do? SE basically never reverses revenge votes unless it's an extended pattern of abusive votes, either at one person, or many people
– Zoe stands with Ukraine Mod
@ZoestandswithUkraine You are right, and I also am not saying that it should ever reverse votes, it is basically a right of those who have this privilege to vote on whatever they feel like is good or bad.
Also, my bad for asking this question, because it seems that this really is just pointless. But on the brighter side, the question got improved :D Thanks again all of you.
@Larnu By fair, I meant make sense for the question. But you are right as well.
To an extent, sure, but it's more or less universally agreed that it's scummy to vote for people and not content, even if it isn't at a scale where it can be reversed. Votes, by definition, are meant to be cast on posts for their merit, not by the person that posted it. It's sad that people try to erode that particular element of the voting system, but dealing with it is indeed complicated, for a number of reasons (it's a pain to distinguish normal votes from revenge votes from purely numeric data). Revenge votes for helping or curating is just an established hazard of trying to contribute
@ZoestandswithUkraine Can't agree more.
Given the time it was posted, it looks like a duplicate. Why would someone not already have posted such this question about this very heavily used feature? Visual Studio Code was introduced more than seven years ago. That is half of Stack Overflow's age.
– Peter Mortensen
@PeterMortensen while questions about tools are on-topic, they are quite rarer in comparison with everything else. SO does not tend to have a fully comprehensive Q&A on each tool and its many functionalities. I'd not be surprised if this wasn't covered. Wouldn't really expect it, either. Vi (and derivatives) have existed for decades before SE, yet there are still questions about these. Not sure it's fair to expect a 7 year old tool to be fully documented on SO.
– VLAZ
Summary: Not exactly useful question showing no research - close to 0 total votes count over 3 month is ok.
In my view there are basically two categories of votes:
initial votes, mainly focused on quality of the question (demonstrates research). This is where you expect most of the downvotes to happen. The "initial" period is at most a day, but it is restated/extended by bounties and meta posts like this.
lifetime votes coming due to organic search where people find answers to their question and potentially upvote the question because it matched the problem they were looking for.
Initial votes:
For this question there is absolutely no "demonstrated research" and it is quite unusual thing to do (getting tens of thousands of results to looks through is strange, but indeed it has its uses). As result, the question got corresponding votes for lack of research and usefulness.
Please note that the only outcome of "I did search around on SO but didn't find an answer, any help would be appreciated" text included in the original version of the question would be to invite downvotes. If you could not find answers/relevant information leaving such text out will keep the question free of fluff. What would be useful to show research are links (or lack thereof) to the official documentation on the feature you used (configuration of search in VSCode this case). In this particular case explaining that you checked settings for search would be nice too.
Thing to note is that showing research is not required for a question to be on-topic on SO. It is generally recommended for questions that immediately cause "duh, there is probably setting for that" or "I bet it is written on first line of the method docs" (which is exactly the case here, especially seeing your answer) to clarify why the question is not so trivial.
Lifetime votes (3 month for this question):
The second group of votes (usually upvotes) needs good SEO and some sort of demand for the problem. For SEO full error/warning message (especially one without any dynamic portions like in this case) is a good start, a good title without much fluff may be beneficial (also it is very hard to predict what a "good SEO title" would be). I think SEO side of the question is fine even in the original version.
What I see as the main problem for the question is lack of demand. I expect most people facing this warning to say "makes sense, no way I'm going to read through those thousands of lines", the other would say "hmm, VSCode has sh*-load of settings, I bet there is one" (and would be right - it can be easily found searching for "search" in the VSCode settings), and just remaining tiny number of people (~200 over 3 month) would try to search for error message on they favorite search engine (you probably can't capture folks searching on Amazon :), but Google/Bing are ok). Note that a post needs way more than 200 views to get any meaningful upvotes - it goes as low as 1 vote for 1000 views (an example with 2 million views and less than 2000 votes)
edited Nov 24, 2022 at 21:28
Alexei LevenkovAlexei Levenkov
98k66 gold badges122122 silver badges169169 bronze badges
Please tell me where in the docs is this setting mentioned, the reason I asked this was exactly that I didn't find any documentation for it, I only found a github issue much later on and that was also due to an edit from kylemit
Searching this, all you get is a reddit thread with no answers, some videos which I haven't reviewed yet, and a github issue from 2017 which says this setting doesn't exist and another one talking about the limit of the REPLACE and some vscode docs which don't mention this.
try searching the exact current title of the question "How to increase max search results in VS Code?" and see if you get any answers on the first or second pages.
But if we were to conclude, the question got downvoted this much in the beginning due its mere simplicity?
One more thing, I am not asking about the number of votes its got, but specifically the downvotes, so the 1 vote per thousand view metrics part in your answer is just irrelevant..
Why was this question downvoted so heavily?
What to do about "forgotten" bounties?
How should this poorly received question be improved?
Why wasn't this question deleted?
Why do we close review audit disputes as duplicates?
Will having unwillingly deleted questions without votes negatively affect my account?
Why are two self-answered questions about new Java 14+ features so heavily downvoted?