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What do you call this input, terminal device?

Should we force people to tell you why they downvoted a question? Some people seem to downvote people for personal reasons. I feel a reason should be given so that at least the moderator can see if that person is abusing the system.

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    IMHO, I think that we should encourage people to explain downvotes, but we shouldn't force people to explain.
    – user150280
    Jul 11, 2022 at 11:41
  • I think we should not suggest, encourage, or mandate that downvoters explain anything. Jul 12, 2022 at 21:52

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No, we shouldn't. This is a topic that often comes up on different Stack Exchange and there's an FAQ entry on Meta Stack Exchange: Why isn't providing feedback mandatory on downvotes, and why are ideas suggesting such negatively received?

Forcing downvotes to be accompanied by comments or other feedback sounds like a good idea at first, and many here would like to see new users get all the info they need to ask questions that are a better fit! Contrary to popular opinion, most users here are nice and want to help, and don't enjoy "shooting down" newbies' questions with downvotes to make them feel bad and unwelcome.

However, downvotes are important for the health of a site, and mandating feedback for them would massively impede the way Stack Exchange currently works—to the point of potentially destroying it. It's just not feasible, for a number of very good reasons. That's why, although this gets suggested frequently (on average, a few times per week overall, both here and across per-site metas), it is declined and often downvoted* by meta users.

Not all reasons listed further down in the answer are applicable to English Language Learners, but most are.

Some people seem to downvote people for personal reasons.

If you feel you're the victim of serial downvoting and the system does not revert it overnight, you can always use a custom moderator flag and we'll look into it.

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    I have one answer on one site where I was downvoted six times and mine is the only accurate answer. Flagging did nothing. This happens a lot where translation is asked for as many people simply are not qualified or don't know...
    – Lambie
    Jul 11, 2022 at 17:59
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I for one would like to mandate or do more to encourage comments on downvotes. I strongly disagree with the post quoted by Glorfindel, and the other similar post on this topic that I have read. I posted this as a feature request on the main Meta site some time ago, and was so strongly downvoted that I had to delete the question if I ever wanted to post comments on Meta again. So I accept that no rule does or can mandate such comments, but I sometimes post comments asking downvoters for their reasons, and I think it would be better if downvoters normally provided reasons.

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  • '...downvotes are important for the health of a site, and mandating feedback for them would massively impede the way Stack Exchange currently works—to the point of potentially destroying it.' - this is so true. I feel that down- and up-votes are necessary to make the Stack Exchange algorithm work effectively if I can put it that way. Jul 14, 2022 at 18:50
  • ... It's definitely more difficult to shake off an opinion of a user once you know why they DVed your question/s or answer/s. It becomes personal. And any subsequent DVs you receive, their name is always first in the list. So... I see why anonymous voting has its merits. – @Mari-Lou A, ELL Meta, Jan 10, 2017 Jul 15, 2022 at 12:29
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    The problem with mandating feedback is that you can't force people to give constructive feedback and you can't force them to use their dvs the way that you personally feel is best. It is far more constructive for some downvotes to be anonymous and impersonal than for there to be a comment like "This is dumb question that can be answered with a dictionary." The only answer is to encourage more voting and more engagement and to model the behavior you would like to see. It's not very satisfying, because you can't tell if it's working, but once in a while you will see someone doing what you do.
    – ColleenV
    Jul 15, 2022 at 12:34

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