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I've recently noticed this answer got a down-vote. A lot of good answers contain one, or two down-votes.

Now I realize this is how the system works, and that other users are entitled to have their own opinion on usefulness.

However given:

  • This is a good, updated answer.
  • No comment was left.
  • This was not the first such answer I noticed.

I don't really understand this voting behavior.

I was wondering if anyone here has any insights on why some people down-vote such questions? What might cause that?

Note: I'm not complaining about it or suggesting a change. I'm genuinely interested in understanding this voting behavior in this case on stack-overflow.

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marked as duplicate by hims056, Lucifer, Martijn Pieters, wax eagle, Manishearth Jun 14 '13 at 13:45


-1 Just because I can click. –  Yet Another User Jun 13 '13 at 22:47
Maybe the downvoter had a headache that day. Maybe they don't like reading lots of text. Maybe they're annoyed they didn't think of it themselves. Maybe they hit downvote by accident when scrolling the page and didn't realise. Who knows? It got over 100 upvotes so it's clearly a good answer. –  JonW Jun 13 '13 at 22:48
FWIW, the question got downvoted too (same number of downvotes). So maybe people don't like self-answered questions about popular (and constantly reoccurring) problems because there already exist so much information about it, albeit scattered. Of course not all high-voted answers are self-answers, but it could be a factor. You also have to keep in mind that high-voted answers/questions attract more views, thus more voters. –  Felix Jun 13 '13 at 23:23
Another possibility: The bad "never ever do this" SJAX solution was listed as solution #1, and the right solution was listed as #2. The author did point out how terrible the method is (and later edited to make it even more clear how bad it is), but still someone that already knew the right answer may have been just scanning, seen the terrible solution as solution #1, and downvoted based on that. –  Ben Lee Jun 13 '13 at 23:25

2 Answers 2

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Maybe they didn't find the answer was useful to their situation. It's a great answer indeed, but the voting system has one minor flaw. It involves human logic.

If the downvoter had a bad experience with that user, maybe they downvoted him out of spite. If that's the case, the system will resolve the issue.

If the downvoter didn't find the post useful, then s/he's free to vote how s/he pleases.

Haters gonna hate

share|improve this answer
I hate moving GIFs –  Henk Holterman Jun 13 '13 at 23:03
@HenkHolterman, yea...me too. I fixed it for ya –  ChristopherW Jun 13 '13 at 23:08

There's many possible valid reasons:

  1. The user is trying to earn the Critic badge for downvoting.
  2. The user doesn't understand the answer.
  3. The user disagrees with the answer for some reason.
  4. The user feels the answer is too long, complicated, etc.

Then there's the unpredictable reasons:

  1. The user who downvotes doesn't like the user who answered for some reason.
  2. A user is in a bad mood.
  3. The user mis-clicks.
  4. The user is drunk.
  5. [Add your own reason here]
share|improve this answer
You think doesn't like the user who answered is a valid reason? –  Henk Holterman Jun 13 '13 at 23:02
I'm suggesting that in their mind, it is valid. Personally, I wouldn't do that, but not everyone thinks that way... –  cale_b Jun 13 '13 at 23:05
I don't know about other people, but my occasional forays into drunken stackoverflowing tend to result more in undeserved upvotes than downvotes. –  Ben Lee Jun 13 '13 at 23:15
Downvoting a post that you don't think is actually bad, unhelpful, incorrect, etc. just to get a badge isn't a "valid reason" in my mind. There are a lot of answers deserving of a downvote if that's all you care about. –  Servy Jun 14 '13 at 1:25

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