I ask this question here, since the downvotes on this answer triggered my question. However, although it is a general issue with the stackexchange site, the issue has already been discussed in different communities and I am interested in the views from academia.SE.
Sometimes it goes like this:
- the first version of a question or an answer is not written properly, contains some misunderstanding or is unclear at some point,
- then this leads to downvotes,
- hopefully criticism is explained in the comments,
- then edits to the question or answer which clear the issues.
However, if there are downvoters who did not comment, they will probably never come back to the question or answer (also these who commented won't) and it will remain with a negative score. Often, additionally, the Matthew effect kicks in and the post may collect more downvotes although the issues have basically been cleared.
Is there a way to get notified if questions or answers I downvoted get edited?
As I see from the discussions in
- Notification on edit of downvoted content on meta.stackoverflow from 2014
- Why are there no notifications for edits after I cast a downvote on it? on meta.superuser from 2014
and
- Allow an edit to notify downvoters: “I think I've fixed the issue now - please check” on meta.stackexchange from 2009
this question has been discussed early on. In 2009 it was a declined feature and in 2014 the idea got popular again but, as I see, no definitive conclusion. Also, this "feature request" is the second highest votes declined feature on meta.stackexchange, so I guess, the idea could have a chance to be revisited.
One of the earlier questions on the issue focused on downvotes for questions of new users and discouragement they get from questions that remain with downvotes although they have been improved. In the answer I linked above it is an answer of a high-rep user (even a moderator) that got the downvotes so discouragement may not be a great concern. My concern is more that a negative score on an improved answer just does not reflect the opinions on the question and its value properly and the mechanism of up- and downvotes does not work as it should.
What's the opinion of this community?
