Let's talk about how this community uses votes.

Question

Hi, grouchy old man here. I’m here to discuss the culture of Pokebase, regarding how well users treat each other on the Q&A. I’ve had conversations about this with a couple other users, and I’m sure I’ve complained about this to staff, and while I’ve pretty much removed myself from the site, I still care and I’d like to see a positive shift in the culture. Almost all of the users we’ve had over the years are very nice. And that’s a huge problem! They’re too nice. The criticism of answers and questions seems to be few and far between, and when things are scrutinized, it’s often because there are immediate, glaring issues of the contents of the question/answer (i.e., the question needs lots of clarification, information in an answer is dubiously sourced or straight up wrong, etc.). Which is great! These things should be criticized. That being said, though, more things also deserve this treatment. An answer shouldn’t simply be right. It needs to be a good answer. Take into account formatting, ease of reading, source reliability, answer layout, et cetera. Great job if your answer is correct! Fabulous! That means jack to me if it takes me ten minutes to decipher it. A correct answer isn’t always a helpful answer. Reminder that part of what sets this site apart from other forums is the lack of discussion threads allows people to readily find answers without scrolling through days of back and forth, and poorly formatted (or otherwise bad) answers being selected as best is antithetical to this.

Obviously I appreciate how kind most of the members of this community are, though when people refuse to downvote their little buddies when they write a genuinely bad answer, or when people give a post with more downvotes than upvotes a pity upvote, it’s not only dishonest, but I feel it affects the integrity of the community. Perhaps a little dramatic, yes, but I know some of you do this, and I, as a user with no authority other than my seniority over most of you, politely ask you to stop. This isn’t a call to give out fewer upvotes (though some of you are upvoting everything in sight and you need to cool it), this is a call to downvote more freely. Does an answer make no sense? Does it take you an excessive amount of time to decipher? Does the lack of formatting make it hard to read? It needs a downvote. The cool thing is that you can use the bad answer’s source to write an answer that doesn’t suck! Your precious two points will easily be regained with a shiny upvote! Golly!

My request is that you all be more liberal with downvotes, or at the very least, with constructive criticism of answers, and realize that criticism should be a positive thing. Obviously, continue to be kind — this is not an invitation for you to be mean — but increased criticism of answers will result in higher quality answers. There are numerous active users that have given out incredibly few downvotes relative to the amount of upvotes they’ve given, and it seems that many users see downvoting as a taboo and something reserved for especially bad answers. Things other than content makes answers bad. Give people feedback on their answers, tell them when their formatting sucks, tell them that their source is unreliable, tell them that they talk too much and need to get to the point. Give them a downvote for their unforgivable misdeed of writing such an answer.

Would love for constructive discussion about this to happen below.

Comments

Wouldn’t it be funny if I downvoted this

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Do you have any specific examples of posts that have positive votes and shouldn't?

Another thing that might be helpful is explaining yourself whenever you up-vote an answer that has been criticized by another user.

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Here's one that shows this isn't just a 2026 issue: https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/329180#a329417 (post was +2 when I saw it originally)

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well I think your right but look at this scenario my shuckle moveset was wrong, I wrote the IV's twice and misspelled it, but freggles told me and I edited and saved me. So should he just downvote or flag my answer or help me to fix it?

also yes I am to kind so to celebrate my 16th downvote I got, I will now stop not giving downvotes.

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While I agree with the message, I don’t see much benefit in making a public post about it. It’s really only a few select users, and if there’s a concern, it can be brought up with staff to directly address instead of making a whole post about it. Additionally, it’s already in the rules, and we’ve had multiple PSA’s about it in the past. All and all, this post kind of seems redundant to me, and reads more like a vent rather than trying to better the community.
On my personal feelings on the topic/mildly off topic, I like how there’s a lot of freedom in how people choose to vote. I like how people don’t get spamdownvoted like Reddit does. The downvotes on pdb feel very meaningful

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@Vines The post did say that down-votes should be explained and answers should be criticized. An unexplained down-vote is still not helpful.

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Perhaps a rant about my personal feelings, yes, though I feel that addressing specific users isn't really a viable solution to this problem. This has been an issue for as long as I can remember, and addressing specific users won't change the culture that surrounds the site, and making posts on someone's wall going "hey! go downvote some people! thanks :)" seems... silly. I'm really not encouraging people to give out more downvotes, I know I said this in my post, but I suppose what I really meant is that I want people to think about how they vote. If downvotes are meaningful, then why are upvotes handed out like candy? Obviously we get far more answers deserving of an up than a down, but if we treat downvotes like they're only reserved for the worst of the worst, then why should we treat upvotes differently? Currently downvotes have a sort of boogeyman type reputation, and I think people are averse to downvoting because the cliquey nature that often develops between users of the site. I enjoy the community but I don't think that should get in the way of being a helpful forum with high quality answers. I also dislike Reddit's senseless "I disagree so I'm downvoting" mindset, but keep in mind that there's not a whole lot of questions where people can simply disagree with answers; they're either right or wrong, for the most part.

I'd like to clarify that the intent of this post was not to rant. I wanted to make my (and I believe at least a few other users) feelings known, and I'd like to discuss it with the rest of the community. Stuff like this shouldn't be reserved for staff talking spaces, and shouldn't be restricted to personal conversations, in my opinion.

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I asked for specific examples because I don't think the issue is as common as you say it is, not because I want to talk to or target specific people.

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I was responding to Silver, actually, sumwun. One of the things that made me think of this was a now hidden answer on Hexahedron's question regarding donuts. If my memory is correct, it was just copypasted from Serebii and was borderline unreadable, and may not have even answered the question properly, and despite this, it still had two upvotes. No other examples come to mind, but several users seem to be averse to downvoting at all, and while, as mentioned elsewhere, these tend to be our youngest users, I think removing this apparent stigma around downvoting would help prevent this issue from continuing.

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I will admit that I have upvotes answers not because they're good but because they don't deserve the downvotes they got lol

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It’s not good to try to cancel out downvotes, it removes some of the purpose of why it was given. No one downvotes for no reason, just because you don’t understand or agree with it, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t deserved. Downvoting tells other people there’s something wrong with it. If you upvote because you don’t think it’s deserved, you should be able to explain or rationalize why it deserves the upvote

Answer 1

Downvoted! Your formatting sucks, your source is unreliable, you talk too much, and you need to get to the point.

So in other words, I completely agree. These issues flare up every few years and require more guidance from the top. I've got an update of the rules written here that is partly aimed toward providing that:

#0.5. Use privileges for their intended purpose: Up votes are for helpful posts, down votes are for misleading or lazy posts, and flags are for posts that need attention from editors/mods. Don't ask for votes or vote the same person repeatedly. Don't give sympathy votes to posts that were down voted.

If you have ideas to improve this while keeping it brief, let me know. Also have some content in the works that might help in this area, in terms of what posts should be valued on this site and reinforced through voting behaviour.

Another point to discuss is how the points system disincentivises downvotes, perhaps too much given the informative purpose that downvotes have. I sense that taking 10 points off somebody (and losing 2 yourself) feels harsh. People don't want to penalise their friends or discourage people from having a go. I would be open to reducing both penalties if it brought us to equilibrium.

Also feel the need to acknowledge reality. Issues like sympathy voting and poor writing are frequently driven by select individuals, who tend to skew younger, who don't necessarily reflect the state of the whole community. Time often fixes problems like that, but we can definitely make things better in future by being clearer about the site's values.

Comments

Small nitpick, "Don't vote the same person repeatedly" might be better reworded as "Don't vote based on who wrote the post." It's fine to be voting on the same person multiple times if they make a lot of helpful (or unhelpful) posts, but the problem is when people vote based on things like whether a user is new or well-liked, rather than based on the content.

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I think people get the point either way, but yeah that part can probably be reworded. Will fix later.

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wow fizz, you and ht are like the batman and robin of grumpy old men on the db

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Hah, I'll admit that I'm not as well-spoken as I'd like to be. Perhaps antithetical to my post!

I absolutely agree that there should be less of a penalty regarding downvoting. I don't really care if people lose fake internet points, but I remember it being discouraging for that to happen when I was younger. I'd rather people be open to showing when they do or don't like something with little to no penalty for both the voter and the person receiving the votes. Unfortunately I can't imagine this will change anytime soon, if ever.

Admittedly, I've got no better ideas on how to word that rule in a way that addresses these issues. It may be worth it to guide new users towards a brief thread on site etiquette through wall posts or otherwise? The sgt tag is useful for more in-depth answers regarding rules, but it could benefit from a short "welcome to Pokebase, here's what we're all about" post. I'm a bit scatterbrained currently, so we might have something like that already. Perhaps a greater effort could be made to direct newbies towards the sgt threads? I feel like it's usually reserved for when a rule is broken, but a friendly wall post on new users with activity linking them to a short thread could potentially go a long way. But I hate to add another thing to the big list of stuff that staff wants to get done, hah.

I don't think any of these issues are particularly pressing. If nothing comes from this thread I won't be particularly upset, but I thought it was a conversation worth having, and one that the entire community should be allowed to participate in.

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You'll always have these issues as your population skews younger, and likely it's not something you can really action (kids will learn over time).

That being said, downvoting all of you for reminding me that I'm an old & grouchy too.