3

I'm aware that questions related to Israel-Palestine are often controversial, and I asked a few of these along the years. But in the past month I asked three questions which collected a particularly high number of downvotes. At the time of writing the counts are:

For the sake of comparison, each of my previous questions on the same topic has around 2 or 3 downvotes at the time of writing.

I don't know if there have been any strong demographic changes among PoliticsSE users, or if my questions have become especially worse? But this looks statistically different.

I'm just reporting this observation here for reference, or in case there is any wrongdoing going on. If someone has a logical explanation, I'd be interested to know about it.

2
  • 2
    What I can tell you is that a lot more people put political causes in their user names lately.
    – 264 champagne bottles on ice
    Commented Nov 26, 2023 at 21:22
  • 3
    You are not alone - all my questions and answers on this conflict have been heavily downvoted. I attribute this to either information warfare from Israel and / or ordinary Jewish / Israelis members here, inflamed by the war, trying to express their political frustration. In either case, I think we should let it be - due to the war, passion will be high on both side. It should cool down and correct itself later. Those of us getting downvoted should also consider it as an opportunity to evaluate our own (perhaps obsessive) attachment to the issue, and invest our time more productively. :).
    – sfxedit
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 10:57

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

The large number of downvotes is an indirect consequence of the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israel, and the Israeli military response to these attacks.

This has resulted in an intense polarisation of opinion since Oct 7th, and where there are strong polarised opinions, there will be down and up votes from people who reject or share your assumed point of view.

Right now, with tempers running high, you may expect questions about Palestine/Israel to provke downvotes, especially if there is any hint of "taking sides".

2
  • Nevertheless, I hope it is being monitored and studied. Already I've noticed memes creeping in, and not being flagged, when ordinarily such questions would be shut down immediately for "promoting a cause and not being in good faith". I've also pointed out how some questions are getting increasingly closed and reopen multiple times.
    – sfxedit
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 22:37
  • Upvoted, because there is a lot of truth to tempers being short right now. Nevertheless, 2 out of the 3 questions had serious issues going in: "meaning of" seems like a bit of pointless nitpicking around terminology (OP admitted some a lack of clarity in response to my comment). And "support for Hamas" started out as an unanswerable hypothetical (which I DVed before upvoting its final form). So OP is not entirely innocent in getting DVs for good, if polarizing, Qs, asked in flawed fashion.
    – Italian Philosopher
    Commented Dec 1, 2023 at 20:18

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .