What is voting down?
Voting down, also known as "casting downvotes", is how the community indicates which questions and answers are least useful.
When should I vote down?
Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.
You have a limited number of votes per day, and answer down-votes cost you a tiny bit of reputation on top of that; use them wisely.
How do I vote down?
Click the large down arrows to the left of each post.
You can undo your votes by clicking the same vote button, but only within a small time limit, so be careful with those clicks. To change a vote from down to up, click the up arrow without undoing the down-vote, and vice versa.
What happens when I vote down?
When you vote down, you are nudging that content "down" the page, so it will be seen by fewer people. Voting down answers is not something we want you to take lightly, so it is not free.
- Downvotes remove 2 reputation from the post owner.
- Downvotes on answers remove 1 reputation from you, the voter.
- Downvotes on questions are free. (Why?)
- You can vote 30 times per UTC day. You get an additional 10 votes on questions only. (Why?)
What are the alternatives to down-voting?
The up-vote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Down-voting should be reserved for extreme cases. It's not meant as a substitute for communication and editing.
Instead of voting down:
- If the post is spammy or offensive, flag it.
- If the question is duplicate or off-topic, flag it for moderator attention.
- If something is wrong, please leave a comment or edit the post to correct it.
What's this new “review” link?
Review allows you to monitor posts that are likely to require additional assistance from more experienced users. You can help through editing, voting (up or down), flagging, or marking that no further assistance is needed. If you are ever unsure what to do with a post, you can skip it easily. At this privilege level, you gain access to review first posts and late answers on main sites (these review queues do not exist on meta sites).
