Why Do You Vote Articles Down?

Posted August 22nd, 2008 by ThatOneCaveman

I've been noticing a trend lately with many upcoming articles with a score of 2 less than the number of people listed in "Who Voted". Many of these articles are more than worthy of getting onto the front page, but some (possible) trolls are working to keep good articles out.

Personally, I've only given out a few negative votes and I try to reserve those for obvious spam articles. If I dislike an article or don't agree with it, I'll just not give it a vote. If it's good, I'm quick to give it a vote.

What is your voting "strategy"? If you give negatives, what are your criteria? We're all here (well, most of us at least) because we have a love for personal finance. I hope that, as a community, we would try to be as supportive of each other as possible.

If there are griefers and trolls among us, I hope that the growth of the community and an overwhelming positive response would be enough to drive them out or at least limit their effectiveness.

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Here's my strategy as a

Pinyo 13 weeks 1 day 11 hours 29 min ago

Here's my strategy as a user. If I see a good article, I will often leave comment on the post and vote up. If I am busy, I may just vote it up without leaving comment.

If I don't agree with the article or doesn't feel it deserves an up vote, I usually leave it alone.

If it's a spam, commercial site, or outright bad, I vote it down (or immediately kill it as an admin).

As admin, I scan the "least popular" section once in a while and cull out the ones that have been voted down by several members.

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Pinyo
Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog

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1 Up Down

ThatOneCaveman, I've noticed

brokegradstudent 12 weeks 6 days 11 hours 26 min ago

ThatOneCaveman, I've noticed a similar trend. After looking at the "Who Voted" section on some of the articles, it appears that some users are giving negative votes if the blogger submitted their own article, regardless of the quality of the article. It really appears that the vote is simply based on the fact of who submitted it, rather than the merit of the actual post.

Personally, I strongly disagree with this and feel that it adds unnecessary tension to the community. In fact, now I feel obligated to vote these posts up to simply offset the unwarranted negative votes, which is not how I want to use this site.

Before this started happening, I followed a similar voting strategy to yours. I voted articles I liked up, voted obvious spam articles down, and left articles that I didn't like alone. I think encouraging more like-minded people to actively participate here is the best way to overcome the negative energy at the moment.