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I asked the following question about just dance 2014 controller configuration. However, I was met with pretty hostile downvotes, where when I clarified if it was valid, was just met with more downvotes.

Is this question a bad fit for this site? Because if it is I'll just delete my question, no need for the community to go toxic.

Also is it bad form to simply comment on what's wrong than just downvoting and leaving the asker in oblivion?

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    Don't take downvotes personally, they aren't.
    – Wrigglenite
    Dec 3, 2017 at 14:53
  • Downvotes are not hostile. They are judgements on the post itself. Read the tooltip: This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful
    – Frank
    Dec 3, 2017 at 14:57
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    @DanmakuGrazer my bad. Just got a bit triggered. Pretty bad day. But thanks for taking the time to comment
    – Malky.Kid
    Dec 3, 2017 at 14:58
  • @DanmakuGrazer They aren't. Unless they actually are.
    – user66556
    Dec 3, 2017 at 23:40
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    @vaxquis As far as I know, serial downvoting is automatically dealt with by the system. Assuming that any downvote is a personal attack misses the entire point of downvotes and shifts responsibility from the post's author to random anonymous users, without giving any thought to whether the post actually deserved a downvote or not. It's not a good mindset.
    – Wrigglenite
    Dec 4, 2017 at 8:11
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    @DanmakuGrazer I fear you're wrong. It's not the serial downvoting that's dealt with by the system - it's the results of blatant s.d. that are. I never said you have to assume the downvote is a personal attack. I only said that "downvotes are not hostile" is an oversimplification. Many times, they ain't. Some times, they are.
    – user66556
    Dec 4, 2017 at 15:41
  • @vaxquis Can you point out some examples where the downvotes are hostile? Almost every single time, that's going to be a misinterpretation. Note that not commenting is not hostile.
    – Frank
    Dec 6, 2017 at 13:02
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    Some people expect very high posting standards, so their votes might be misinterpreted as hostile when that particular question or answer looks actually good. I have received downvotes over a single word in the past... nothing to worry about, just carry on.
    – dly
    Dec 6, 2017 at 14:00
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    @Frank I've already linked the most blatant case. I've been targeted once. Many people have been targeted multiple times. I'm not going to argue over it; meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106704/… meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100980/… meta.stackexchange.com/questions/224911/… meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303130/… etc. google 'revenge downvoting' for more examples.
    – user66556
    Dec 6, 2017 at 14:24
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    @Frank BTW, by arguing that "downvotes are not hostile", you're completely mistaken about the nature of humankind and about the frequency of one of the most common emotions known to mankind ; just because you either hasn't been a target or hasn't noticed, doesn't mean that other people weren't. I'm not saying this was the OP's case. I'm saying that some people are, by the virtue of statistics, hostile, and as such, by simple logic, you can arrive at the conclusion that many of their actions will be, too.
    – user66556
    Dec 6, 2017 at 14:26
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    @vaxquis Revenge voting is hostile, sure. And is promptly reversed as soon as the serial voting script runs, and is therefore not a problem. Beyond voting on the person, people can, and do, vote for any reason whatsoever. The perception of hostility is exactly that; only a perception. Unless you can show actual, concrete examples of hostile votes (you can't, because you don't know why people voted), the point stands. Votes are not hostile. Your perception of them as such is common, and wrong.
    – Frank
    Dec 6, 2017 at 15:56
  • @Frank you contradict yourself. Revenge voting is hostile, sure., and Votes are not hostile. Votes are made by people. Votes made by hostile people are hostile. There's nothing much more to be said. Also, you're wrong both as to s.d. reversal (I'm not going into this discussion again, it's been already covered at meta ad nauseam; in short, you e.g. spam two downvotes every 2-3 days), and as to the "you can't, because you don't know why people voted", you're also completely wrong - I've been told by people why they voted - so actually - I can know why they voted.
    – user66556
    Dec 6, 2017 at 16:40
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    @Frank also, FWIW - I've been using SO since its inception. Don't patronize me with "your perceptions" please. I never said anything that contradicts your statement that "Beyond voting on the person, people can, and do, vote for any reason whatsoever." - because yes, that is true. Thus, from "people vote for any reason" follows that people also sometimes vote out of hostility. Just because you can't prove it in all cases, doesn't mean it's unprovable in all of the cases. Again - just because something didn't happen to you, doesn't mean it doesn't happen to anybody.
    – user66556
    Dec 6, 2017 at 16:43
  • We all have our dreams. Some of us have our nightmares.
    – JonathanDavidArndt
    Dec 8, 2017 at 1:25

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Methods of controlling games, IMO, are not a bad fit for this site. I see plenty of questions and answers on the site about controllers and apps unique to individual games as well as standard controllers for systems. Most of these have zero downvotes.

Also, I believe it is bad form in most cases not to have a valid reason to downvote. I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way. Though too often, voting becomes a 'fire and forget' situation, and you won't hear a reason. Furthermore, you don't get notified when someone responds to a question you've voted on and if you're already opposed to the question for reasons, you're not likely to come back and explain yourself.

Then again, I also believe it's bad form not to reverse your downvote when people have edited their question or answer to make it more suitable, useful, and/or researched. But what can you do? Outside of Stack implementing a new policy that whenever a question or answer is edited, it loses all prior votes, I'm not sure that's going to change. And I doubt that would happen as it has high potential to be abused.

Additionally, if you provide an answer to your question yourself, feel free to accept your own answer. IIRC, if another better answer comes along, it is possible to change the accepted answer at a later date.

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  • You get the commenting privilege before downvoting, anybody who is able to downvote has the ability to comment as well.
    – Broneironaut
    Dec 12, 2017 at 12:35
  • Ah, thanks for the tip. It's been a while. I've updated my answer.
    – Ayelis
    Dec 12, 2017 at 18:19
  • It is not, and has never been, bad form to not comment.
    – Frank
    Dec 12, 2017 at 19:45
  • It's not the act of not commenting in and of itself. It's not having a reason for your actions. Unless you're defending mindless downvoting?
    – Ayelis
    Dec 12, 2017 at 19:50
  • There is. Read the tooltip.
    – Frank
    Dec 12, 2017 at 19:54
  • Whoever downvoted me appears to be getting no use out of this answer. It must not be you, or you would not have responded. Responding creates usefulness. A conversation has been started. Use has been attained. Also, what is useful to one person may not be useful to another. Therefore voting as a whole should be removed since obviously, it's utterly useless to derive value from. Currently, accepted answers throughout the site have plenty of downvotes, and yet, they are accepted as useful, utterly negating all of the "not useful" votes even though they still show up. Explain that.
    – Ayelis
    Dec 12, 2017 at 19:58
  • You are seeing downvotes as personal criticism. They are not. They are signal for future readers, telling them this post has problems. It helps raise the signal to noise ratio. Answer acceptance is utterly irrelevant to the discussion. It just means the asker clicked the checkmark. That's it.
    – Frank
    Dec 12, 2017 at 20:02
  • Where did I say "personal" or "criticism" in my response? I merely responded to the tooltip. The tooltip in question appears to state that the voter is indicating whether the question or answer is useful or not useful, to the Voter. My point is that that is not an indication of whether or not the question or answer is useful to the Author, or to the Intended Recipient. My secondary point is also that once a voter has responded, said voter has found value/usefulness, therefore their vote of "sheer uselessness" is negated.
    – Ayelis
    Dec 12, 2017 at 20:09
  • A response does not mean the post has provided utility in any sense. If anything, it is just a clarification as to why the post is lacking. It does not override the purpose of voting, nor is it supposed to. You also missed another part of the tooltip: research effort. That's going to be one of the primary reasons for downvoting; not researching beforehand. That goes for both main sites and Meta. Meta has the added function of agree/disagree for voting, especially for feature requests.
    – Frank
    Dec 12, 2017 at 20:53
  • My bad. I was looking at the answer tooltips. Therefore everything I said is likely 100% the opposite of what is true.
    – Ayelis
    Dec 12, 2017 at 22:22
  • @Frank "It is not bad form to comment" "Read the tooltip" Ok I'll bite. For questions, the tooptip says "Lacks research effort": Can you tell me the difference between my quesiton and this one? (gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/64270/…) cause fundamentally I think we have the same type of question. "unclear": Which part of "Will that (app) also work for the 2014 version?" was confusing? "Not Useful": Why? Why isn't it useful? Why don't you just COMMENT and tell me what's wrong? On answers: "Answer is not Useful": Again, Why?
    – Malky.Kid
    Dec 13, 2017 at 22:01
  • @Frankwhen you don't comment, you leave us to second guess what's wrong. You also leave us feeling that you're just downvoting for the heck of it, dismissing to help further. Isn't stack overflow's major principle to help people? to answer questions? In effect, by not commenting you just made us guess what's wrong. OR made us feel that we're being singled out. I know, you shouldn't feel they are personal, but when you receive downvotes it can get jarring. without telling me what's wrong, its like you're telling me I'm a big idiot.
    – Malky.Kid
    Dec 13, 2017 at 22:06
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    @Malky.Kid No, SE's major principle is not to help people. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose. It's to build a high quality repository of knowledge, to make the internet a better place. This is done through Q&A, which helps the askers, yes, but that is not the primary purpose. You are taking comments personally; I get that. It's hard to see them objectively, but they truly are not personal. Requiring comments just leads to things like revenge downvotes, arguments, and what have you, which means people downvote less, and we need people to downvote.
    – Frank
    Dec 14, 2017 at 0:32

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