I posted a question that seems to have gotten some commentless downvotes.

Keeping it meta, did I misunderstand something about the intended purpose of Code Review? I suspect having had the word "style" in the question line might have triggered it. But isn't code review specifically for code that actually works, but could be written in a better way wrt. some measure?

I didn't intend for any holy wars here. Not used to the review proces when it doesn't involve some degree of physical contact. I'm also unsure if this is the proper use of a meta, as this is my first meta post.

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    \$\begingroup\$ +1 unsure of why you got your downvotes. Even with your original post prior to edits it seemed fine. The subject matter might have been a bit narrow but I wouldn't've downvoted \$\endgroup\$ – Dan Pantry Nov 19 '15 at 22:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ I am not sure if this is true, but some user may downvote A vs B question as A vs B questions aren't very popular. I don't, though, because there is really no "bad" parts of the question. \$\endgroup\$ – TheCoffeeCup Nov 19 '15 at 22:22

Your question, as originally written, was marginal for Code Review. As of Rev 6, it is now a fine question.

The problems were:

  • Your question had a generic title that did not meet the guidelines in How to Ask a good question.
  • You also dumped a bunch of code in the question without explaining what the code is supposed to accomplish.
  • As a result, the code you posted could be interpreted as just a hypothetical example. The question was closer to "How do you feel about LINQ in general?" than to "This is my code to accomplish x; how can I improve it?"
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    \$\begingroup\$ Thank you. I had not expected to have learned more about code review by having my code review reviewed, but since code review is already meta, going one level deeper sort of makes sense. :) \$\endgroup\$ – Simon Shine Nov 19 '15 at 22:50

To rectify: At the time of writing, the question has 0 / -2. Now let's get into why these downvotes might be there:

  1. The question presents two alternatives:

    Believe it or not, I know of users that by principle downvote questions that present two (or even more) approaches to solving the same problem.

    I can somewhat understand them: "What code is up for review exactly now?" and similar are problems in such questions.

  2. Open-ended discussion tone and non-determinism of code:

    The question is formulated in a discussion tone "Which is better?", which is bound to get primarily opinion based answers. Instead of a "What can I do better here?", which allows to justify recommendations with facts, standards and similar...

There might be other reasons for downvoting, but I think these two are the main contributors here.

  • \$\begingroup\$ Alright, I'll keep in mind that the answers should be entertaining to give. Presenting one piece of code with a problem gives the answerer an option to write something nicer, rather than simply to vote. \$\endgroup\$ – Simon Shine Nov 19 '15 at 22:32
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    \$\begingroup\$ I didn't downvoted this particular question, but I often DV A vs B questions, not because they're A vs B questions, but because comparative-review generally make for bad questions. \$\endgroup\$ – RubberDuck Nov 19 '15 at 23:25

Note: I'm not one of the downvoters.

Your question is at 0/-2, which means nobody thought your question was worthy of an upvote and 2 thought it was worthy of a downvote. That's not good. Why?

Well, the only way to be sure is if they tell themselves. However, downvotes are anonymous and nobody is forced to explain why he or she deemed a certain question/answer downvote-worthy.

For starters, you should probably read our how-to-ask-good-questions meta. Apart from that, the following does not indicate you really want a review:

Is the "less Linq-y" alternative preferrable? [sic]

For one, that's asking for opinions. Stack Exchange sites don't do well with opinion-based questions. Code Review works well as follows:

  1. Write code
  2. Make sure it works
  3. Note it can probably be done better
  4. Post it as a question
  5. Get helpful answers

So, to answer your question: yes, you may have misinterpreted what we do at Code Review.

  • \$\begingroup\$ That's my guess as well. Titles can attract downvotes, especially if they give the impression that the question is off-topic. \$\endgroup\$ – Jamal Nov 19 '15 at 22:26
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    \$\begingroup\$ I've read the good question checklist now and can see that the title, the description of the problem, and the major concern/objective for my review wasn't optimal. I'm tempted to think that the title triggered it, and I admit that the word "style" does emit some kind of "there are no right/wrong answers, but there are lots of opportunities to get into a fight about it" vibe I should have thought of. \$\endgroup\$ – Simon Shine Nov 19 '15 at 22:35

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