I came to this website, just wanting to exercise my freedom of speech rights and tell everyone my opinion about [issue]. But people keep downvoting my questions and answers. Is this website infiltrated by the uninformed sheep who blindly believe [other opinion] and keep downvoting everyone they don't agree with? Do people use downvotes to suppress my opinion and further their own?
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15I don't think your target audience is going to respond well to a snarky and sarcastic post at their expense.– Sam I am says Reinstate MonicaCommented Jun 13, 2016 at 4:21
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10I don't know @SamIam. I kinda liked the Monty Python reference.– The Pompitous of LoveCommented Jun 13, 2016 at 18:10
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2 Answers
People don't downvote you because they disagree that your opinion should be posted on this website, they disagree that any opinion should be posted on this website.
Many people on this website will downvote any question or answer which is one-sided and opinionated even when they completely agree with the opinion. The reason is that such contributions do not fit the purpose of this website.
The "What topics can I ask about here?" section on the help center says:
Politics Stack Exchange is for objective questions about governments, policies and political processes.
It is not a place to advance opinions or debate, but rather for exchanging objective information about the policies, processes, and personalities that comprise the political arena.
To avoid getting downvoted for being too opinionated, try to stay calm even when writing about topics you have very strong feelings about. Any question should have the goal to learn more about how politics work. Any answer should explain the workings of politics from a neutral and objective standpoint.
When you are not here to learn or teach about governments and political processes and instead just want to spread the word about a political cause, then you are using the wrong website.
See also this related FAQs:
answered Jun 11, 2016 at 17:18
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5Paragraph #1 neglects to consider the possibility of 1) users who do downvote opinions only when they disagree, or 2) users who downvote facts that don't support their own opinions, or 3) users that conflate opinion with any facts that don't support their own opinions, or 4) overcompensating users that conflate opinion with facts which do support their own opinions.– agcCommented Oct 11, 2020 at 6:35
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@agc: TBH it never ceases to amaze me what can get upvoted here, including the perennial trolling Q about blonde police officers... Commented Feb 3 at 1:29
It seems highly unlikely that there there are not some people on Politics.SE who use downvotes, (and upvotes), to strategically promote and suppress opinions. Officially this is frowned upon, and can be a banning offense. Presumably some of the more artless serial downvoters have been banned.
The sarcastic characterization of "infiltrated by the uninformed sheep who blindly believe [other opinion]" is unfortunate, as it wrongly imputes serial downvoters to be necessarily oblivious, as opposed to proudly, fanatically, deviously, mercenarilly, or militantly, partisan. Put another way, it's no easy task to measure the online ratio of well-informed wolves to uninformed sheep. But surely this ratio has increased over the years, and funding for wolves has never looked better.
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Downvoting this without commenting is only likely to reinforce the position the post takes. So, here's why I've downvoted it; The key word used here is "opinions" as the other answer states politics.SE is not about opinions it's about facts. While completely removing opinion is almost certainly impossible if an answer pushed an opinion without providing solid facts to back it up then it should be down voted. As a case in point, the wikipedia links here to generic descriptions of poor behaviour, rather than to documented cases of such behaviour on site, pushes an opinion rather than a fact.– JontiaCommented Jun 28, 2019 at 13:15
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4@Jontia, Re "documented cases": By it's own policy SE does not publicly document such cases. But the public does know that serial downvoters are and have been banned, which should be obvious since the SE mods have gone to the trouble of writing algorithms to catch instances of the practice. We should be skeptical that any such algorithm is infallible, and we may presume that cheaters continuously evolve new dodges relative to the obstacles that face them.– agcCommented Jun 28, 2019 at 14:10
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5@Jontia, I don't disagree that factual answers are better than mere opinion, but it's irrelevant to this answer. I'm not saying all downvotes are illegitimate, only that Phillip's mockery of the possibility is an inappropriate attitude towards what will always remain a gravely serious possible problem, however remote.– agcCommented Jun 28, 2019 at 14:16