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Elsewhere I wrote:
If an answer does not bring a source but relies on logic or assumptions, then anyone can and should downvote if they, through their own logic or assumptions, think the answer is inaccurate, not useful etc. It is one anonymous internet user versus another, and at least one of them may be a dog.
If the answer does bring a valid source, then ...
11
Please don't. Voting on a post should have absolutely nothing to do with who wrote it or its current score and entirely to do with its current content.
If you want to reward an answer that went above and beyond, you can offer a bounty. There is an existing bounty reason to "reward an existing answer".
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Thank you for bringing this important concern to meta.
I agree with this answer and want to add: I have seen dogma-driven, as opposed to quality-driven, voting severely damage another site. There are actually two ways this problem manifests; you've identified one of them:
Downvoting a valid answer (sourced, sound argument, etc but just reaches a different ...
7
You should vote on answers independent of how many votes it has and independent of the content and quality of any other answer.
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As far as general SE policy is concerned, you are entitled to downvote whatever you want for whatever reasons you choose, but targeted downvoting is not allowed. However, policy is different from the generally agreed upon etiquette of the site, and the generally agreed upon etiquette is that you should downvote answers that are incorrect, incomplete, ...
4
From the Help Center:
When a single user continually votes (up or down) on many of your posts within a short period of time, this is referred to as voting fraud. This could happen for a variety of reasons, such as a user finding a user's great answer and visiting all of their posts to upvote them, or a user getting into an argument with another user and ...
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Folks naturally want to share an answer if they know it, human nature and all. It might not be a great question for the site, but it does show that there's a very friendly and helpful community here - I don't see the harm in them - vote however you feel comfortable but there's no reason to down-vote an answer just because it addresses an off-topic question.
...
3
I don't see a need to downvote the answer (if it isn't wrong), but answers to off-topic/unconstructive questions should not be encouraged as that encourages the questions themselves. So I usually just don't vote on it.
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As noted in comments above, the same proposal has been made, and has had many, many eyes on it for quite some time, on Meta Stack Exchange. Please see there for more information and future updates.
I'm posting this here just to get this question off of the list of unanswered questions here.
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To the system, there was no edit as the author edited within the initial grace period of five minutes. All edits during this period are just considered a single revision, allowing a chance for simple corrections to not clutter the revision history.
We all vote to the same end, but with subtle differences in application. I typically won't vote for a post ...
3
I think that downvote for answers is essentially for errors. Upvote for truth + quality or originality. The content and the form, in the form essentially. brevity and clarty. The ideologic downvote or upvote are not fair. But it is quasi impossible to avoid this in Judaism. If ideology is involved in halacha, e.g. there are groups that want to "modify" ...
2
Forget about it. A single vote on the wrong direction — whatever direction that may be — will probably not affect anyone very much. It happens; move on.
If you really want to change (or rescind) your vote, though, you'll be able to do so once the post you voted on has been edited. So keep checking back on it for edits and then you can vote again. ...
2
Certain close reasons carry an automatic downvote from the Community user, so that may be part of what you're seeing. (I'm not sure which ones in the new scheme, but, for example, "not constructive" was one in the old scheme.)
You should downvote questions that are poor questions, and you should vote to close questions that aren't a good fit for the site. ...
1
You propose:
A downvote on a halacha for whatever reason, has to have a comment saying that they agree with what is written meaning the halacha but they have downvoted for other reasons.
The tooltip over the voting-down button reads "This answer is not useful". More detail is at Stack Exchange's description of the downvote:
When should I vote ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
