That’d probably be already better than nothing ;) Then again, I’m afraid most people would still just (anonymously) downvote without giving reasons. It’s much easier to hide behind an anonymous veil than take a stance and open yourself for debate.
In fact, I’d be curious to see some empirical data on how correlated the act of downvoting and the absence of commenting are. My guess is that those who provide comments (including critical ones) mostly don’t downvote except in extreme cases (e.g. discrimination, obviously off-topic for the forum, obviously misinformation, etc.).
Just to clarify, my proposal is that the downvote would only be counted if the person selected a reason. When I said “without requiring every downvoter to provide an explanation,” I meant without requiring every one of them to type out their own explanation (since they can rely on the defaults or on what a previous person has written).
Ahh, now I get you! Yeah, that sounds like a good idea!
Like I’ve mentioned in another reply, I wouldn’t require the same from upvotes because they may imply the lack of counterarguments, while a downvote implies a recognition that there is a problem, in which case it’d only be fair to state which one it is.
That’d probably be already better than nothing ;) Then again, I’m afraid most people would still just (anonymously) downvote without giving reasons. It’s much easier to hide behind an anonymous veil than take a stance and open yourself for debate.
In fact, I’d be curious to see some empirical data on how correlated the act of downvoting and the absence of commenting are. My guess is that those who provide comments (including critical ones) mostly don’t downvote except in extreme cases (e.g. discrimination, obviously off-topic for the forum, obviously misinformation, etc.).
Just to clarify, my proposal is that the downvote would only be counted if the person selected a reason. When I said “without requiring every downvoter to provide an explanation,” I meant without requiring every one of them to type out their own explanation (since they can rely on the defaults or on what a previous person has written).
Ahh, now I get you! Yeah, that sounds like a good idea! Like I’ve mentioned in another reply, I wouldn’t require the same from upvotes because they may imply the lack of counterarguments, while a downvote implies a recognition that there is a problem, in which case it’d only be fair to state which one it is.