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This question is related to but distinct from my other question about how to encourage people to comment on questions or answers they down vote. It has do do with how the rest of us can best clean up after those who 'down vote and run."

And my question is this: Can we flag posts that have received one or more down votes without any comments? This question (posted by a user with 14 reputation points) got two down votes with no explanation.

When I am pretty sure I understand why a question was down voted, I just comment and try to explain the down vote myself, but I would like to know that I can flag situations when I don't feel confident I can explain these down vote(s), and I think a moderator is needed to help clarify.

Is that a legitimate use of the flag?

I really wish there was a way to hold voters accountable for explaining their down votes, but as far as I understand, there is no way to know or contact the down voters.

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  • Moderators have no influence on voting behavior and can't do anything about this. Also, this is not the "Meta Team", this is the community, this is you and me, and everyone else. Did you try to figure out what's wrong with the question? Hint, go through the close-reasons and check which one could match this question best. ;-)
    – q9f
    Jun 9, 2017 at 14:07
  • But I agree, leaving no comments is very unfortunate, however, I also agree with the downvotes. What's puzzling me is that nobody voted to close this question yet.
    – q9f
    Jun 9, 2017 at 14:08
  • I have only been part of this community for 2 weeks, and I am completely new to Ethereum, blockchain etc,. so it's not always easy for me to figure out what is on or off topic, even with the guidelines. If I am not clear, I don't want to risk confusing someone further. The question I was asking above is about the general situation (not the specific example) of what to do when we can't figure out why people got down voted, and we'd like more experienced folks in this community to come and help.
    – Tesa
    Jun 9, 2017 at 14:22
  • Well sorry I downvoted this question and got interrupted when writing my comment. It is commented now. Sorry again
    – 0xCrema.eth
    Jun 9, 2017 at 14:35
  • 5chdn, I get that the people who deal with Meta issues are the community ("you and me, and everyone else"), but there seems to be only a fairly small subset of people who are actually investing time and attention in addressing meta-level issues, and also a rather small percentage of this community with the power of moderation. Perhaps "Meta team" was not the best or clearest way to refer to that subset of the community, but I can't edit that comment to switch it to "I raised this issue on Meta."
    – Tesa
    Jun 9, 2017 at 14:41
  • Sorry @Tesa - I didn't want to scare you off with my comment. I really appreciate your contributions. I never intended to be picky. We certainly need more people contributing to meta and I'm also very limited on time, so sometimes I'm in too much haste to hack down these comments. Let me answer your question below.
    – q9f
    Jun 15, 2017 at 9:19

1 Answer 1

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Can we flag questions or answers that receive one or more down votes without comments?

No, flagging is a process that raises moderator attention. This is something you do if you see spam, vandalism or very low quality content.

For everything else: Down-vote to help the system and the community to distinguish between good and bad content. Leave comments to teach the authors and other by-passing readers about the Stack Exchange mechanics. Use your vote privileges to close or delete questions.

However, if you have not the privilege to close-vote or delete-vote yet, you are able to flag them, so a moderator can look into that. But in context of your initial question, flagging does not make any sense, because a moderator can not force users to leave any comment.

And on a final note, issues that affect all Stack Exchange site's mechanics are often handled on meta.stackexchange.com. Please, have a look at this gem:

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