I think it would be useful to be able to have short spot to give private feedback for why a node was down voted. There have been both times that I have received down votes without any good explanation why, and there have times when I have given down votes without explaining to the user why I did so in a sub post. I think this would be a way to provide more feed back to users when they do something that warrants the downvote.

The way I would propose that it get implemented would be to have a section that is exposed inside each node that is marked with a down vote. The section would include three things:

• A pulldown of common grievances such as: "Doesn't answer question," "Vague," "Offtopic," "Rude tone," and so on.
• A text box with a maxsize 50 for other.
• A checkbox to indicate if the feedback should be anonymous.

When the "Vote" button is pressed, these extra fields would be submitted with the normal form and stored in a new table that contains the node id, the monk id, and the comment. When a user is browsing their own responses, they would be presented with another hidden field that can be shown by pressing a text link such as "Reasons (4)". The anonymous monk postings would have this section available for anybody browsing.

The downsides that I see is that this would require more html and more fields submitted with every vote. It would require another table with more relationships to pull during reading. It also would introduce Javascript to the system, of which there isn't very much at the moment.

It also sort of duplicates that you can send private messages in the chat, or you can write a follow up comment explaining the downvote. However, these options are rarely done and at least for myself have left me stumped why the sudden down votes. Even though we can use the chat or additional comments - we usually don't. Under the new system, if I received downvotes without explanation I would possibly discount them more.

I think the system would go along why at making criticism a little easier to give and make it a little more constructive. I don't have a lot of tuits, but I'd certainly be willing to help with the extra javascript, table, design, html design, and so on.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.