A minor gripe about upvoting things that have been downvoted [pity upvotes]

Question

I have noticed that sometimes, when I downvote a new question or answer that is borderline, exactly one other person will upvote it and no others. I can guess at the reasoning behind this:

• This question / answer is not quite good enough to have a positive vote total, but does not deserve a negative vote total.
• Therefore, I will vote it back up so that its vote total is zero out of fairness.

This is quite a minor gripe, but I would appreciate if people did not do this. Since downvoting only gives -2 reputation while upvoting gives +5 (questions) or +10 (answers), the net result is +3 or +8 reputation for the user. This behavior is not "fair": it incentivizes borderline content and disincentivizes minor downvotes.

In other words, please only upvote such things from -1 to 0 if you would have upvoted them from 0 to 1.

Answer 1

I have done this a few times for some first questions, and I don't do this out of "fairness", it is my assessment whether this first post deserves standing at $-1$ in my opinion. And I can guarantee you that "-1" has quite a different psychological impact on a new poster than "0" and a comment.

I don't see how one or two +3s for the very first post of a new user is a problem or will lead to more borderline content. It is in fact quite unlikely that a new user understands how they got +3.

I also sometimes happen to upvote first and non-first posts who stand at -1 because I just want to upvote.

I would say that this phenomenon is a consequence of the system and I actually think that is very unlikely that people are smart enough to hit the right obfuscation level on this forum and at the same time want to exploit this to gain reputation. (Except maybe one time for curiosity's sake.)

I disagree that voting "should" be independent of other votes, but this may be a topic for a different thread and "should" should be defined first, although I probably disagree for most definitions.

(Simple recent example: I happened on an older thread with a highly upvoted accepted answer where I added my vote. Then I read the second answer with significantly less votes and realized that it was better. So I removed my vote from the accepted answer and upvoted the second because this was the only way to help indicate that the second answer was better, especially as many people would not read the second less-voted unaccepted answer. Now, the accepted answer totally deserved my upvote, so my vote was based only on the voting pattern.)

Edited to add: The example shows that the votes of the people who "only vote on the content" also depend on prior votes. Since everything is sorted by vote, it is wrong to pretend that there are any "independent" votes.

Answer 2

I don't like this behavior (counter-voting) for the following reason:

I think that it is not the job of any particular user to decide what is the right total vote for a question, it should be decided by the community as a whole, the total vote should be an indicator of what a user reading the question thinks about the question on average and this is a signal to other users.

The counter-voting biases the average towards the opinion of those who are counter-voting, and makes the signaling to other users about the quality of the question less useful.

I think users should vote independent of the total vote a question has at the any time and the votes of other users and solely base their votes on the quality of the question/answer in their opinion.

Counter-voting is not just voting about the question but it is voting about the votes and opinions of other users about the question and deprives other users from their rights to their votes. Would you like it if other users used their votes to counter-vote not because they think the quality of the question deserves their vote but just to cancel your vote?

Answer 3

I don't see any problem at all.

I think the appropriate comparison (for a question) is between net +3 (a downvote and an upvote) vs. 0 (no vote either way). If you explain the downvote (you do that, right?), the OP will have something to learn.

This is not about 10 downvotes followed by 10 upvotes = net +30...that does seem wrong. But just the smidgen of +3 (if that is all it ever amounts to), is not really enough to care about.

If upvotes and downvotes were more psychologically similar, then they'd be designed to be more equitable in value (or the other way around).

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I stumbled across a related question and commentary at meta.SO about sympathy voting. The end result is that (with numbers computed on those sites)...well the opinions go both ways even with objective numbers.

And here's a another relevant meta.SO thread about preventing pity voting. Mostly contra.

Answer 4

Well, this question is 11 years old, and yet it is bumped already. So I hope that it is OK that I answer. Anyways 2011, this is 2022 writing!

When I give upvotes or downvotes, I am often deciding to do so on whether the question or answer deserves an upvote or a downvote, and how many. At least in the cases in the margins so to speak. For example, I agree that a clear "do it for me please" homework question, copied and pasted, should receive a downvote. But if such a question already received say 5 downvotes [and no upvotes], I'll let it be. I certainly will not upvote, to address the OP's question. Nor will I upvote anything else that I think deserves a downvote. But if something already got its share of downvotes, I won't add another to that. No need to pile on further. Just the same, I agree that a good answer should be upvoted. But if an answer already received say, 17 upvotes [given the traffic patterns of MSE now as of this writing, that is quite a decent number], then it would have to be a really clever answer for me to add another upvote. I'm glad that the answer got credit, but I won't upvote if I think the answer does not deserve even more credit than what it had already received.

And, when coming across a question with a few answers where the answer getting the most credit was NOT the best answer, I've certainly upvoted answers that I thought were not getting the credit they deserve--and withheld my upvotes from other answers that were fine but that had already received their points.

So, getting back to the topic, I've occasionally upvoted a question or an answer, not for the reason that I thought it deserved an upvote per se, but instead because I thought it received a downvote it did not deserve. It is actually fairly rare come to think of it, but it has happened.

I am aware of the unfairness of a decent but uninspired post getting a net +8/+3 [10 points/5 points for the upvote minus 2 points for the downvote], when perhaps a net of 0 would have been more appropriate. But is it really more unfair than that decent post receiving a net of -2, and the stigma of a -1 showing up next to it? I suppose I consider this question on a case-by-case basis. In any even I am NOT seeing how this has anything to do with the proliferation of "bad" questions on here where there is no doubt that the downvotes are warranted. Typically those who write those questions are posters who post once or twice and that is it. They just want their homework question answered, they do not seem to care at all about staying around to become productive members of the MSE community.

ETA: Anyways, it may do us all well to understand that, in general, on a site like this, not everyone is going to do things in a way that we agree with, and it is just the way it is. This includes our upvoting and downvoting powers. People are going to upvote and downvote for reasons they see fit, and I don't see what can be done about that. Keeping a perspective about these things may be the best approach.

Answer 5

I recently cast an upvote to reverse a downvote that had been given to this question.

Subsequently, another user and I debated whether I should have upvoted the question. Our back and forth comments were each posted following the question itself.

While you can read the original comments that the other user and I each posted following the question, in an effort to make this answer self-contained, I will repeat my thinking here.

Since my reasons for making the upvote are somewhat long-winded, I think it best to describe them in this answer, rather than in the comments.

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First of all, I think that the point made in the (already existing) answer of Kaveh, to this posted meta-question, is very well taken. That is, I think that the effect on the poster's rep should be consistent with [1 person 1 vote], and the existing [$(-2)$ - downvote ::: $(+10)$ - upvote] mechanism is unfair.

I also think that it is fair to point out that I did not originally upvote this question. Instead, once I saw that the question had been downvoted, I reacted to the downvote.

This is one side of the ledger.

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From my perspective, the other side of the ledger is represented by points made in the already existing answer of Phira, to this posted meta-question.

For reasons explained in the next section of this answer, my opinion is that the question does not deserve a $(-1)$ score. I distinguish this from the conclusion that the question deserves a $(+1)$ score.

Further, I think that Phira hit the nail on the head, when he focused on the psychological effect of a downvote. I regard that effect as being the most important consideration in this situation.

Therefore, I feel that it is important to upvote in such a situation, as long as I also include a comment that clearly explains my thinking.

From my perspective, the real value to the OP in this situation is the combination of my upvote combined with my comment clearly explaining my thinking.

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The remainder of this posting focuses on the specific question that I downvoted. I am unsure how pertinent one specific example is, to the generic issue of upvoting to reverse a downvote. However, I don't see the harm in focusing on the specific question, and explaining my evaluation of this question.

The OP started with an extremely worn-out question:

(In effect) prove that $\forall n \in \Bbb{Z}, ~n^2~$ is not congruent to $(2) \pmod{3}$.

Obviously, the most common approach to this question is to first focus on the manual consideration of $a^2$, for $a \in \{0,1,2\}.$ Then, you compare the congruence, (mod $3$) of $a^2$ with $(a +3k)^2.$

The OP took an unusual approach, that I have never seen before, that I consider creative and potentially workable.

That $a^2 \equiv 2\pmod{3} \implies (a+1)(a-1) \equiv 1\mod{3}.$

Then, in trying to implement this approach, the OP confused the conclusion that (for example) $(a+1)$ is not a multiple of $(3)$ with the conclusion that $(a+1)$ is not a multiple of $(2)$.

Then, the OP showed work, in attempting to prove the desired result, based on the OP's erroneous intermediate conclusion.

I don't see how an analytical error in the work shown justifies downvoting the question. I also don't see how the use of a workable but very non-standard attack on the problem justifies downvoting the question.

Further, besides the OP's creativity, I was positively influenced by the fact that he showed work and then (in effect) asked : is this work valid?

I do not understand what frame of reference leads one to downvote such a mathSE question.

So, what it comes down to is:

I think that the combination of the OP's creativity and work shown deserves to not be downvoted. I stated that in the comments, following the question.

Answer 6

I am the person you are complaining about. I do it out of spite, mostly. I read the question, and if it is truly an awful question like "Do my homework for me" type, I'll let the down-vote stand. Otherwise I up-vote and chuckle a little because I know it's going to make someone grumpy. Good to know it's working.

There is another reason, besides entertainment for this:

I don't know how to best communicate MY OWN questions sometimes. So I do the best I can. Sometimes, my best falls short of some individual's standards. Those individuals come in two forms: Those who down-vote with no comment, and those who leave comments that drip with a sense of superiority. Many love to hold their knowledge over the heads of others.

This type of behavior is so prevalent on this site, that I decided to play anti-hero a little bit.