Are you supposed to down vote if you don't personally like the question, or are you supposed to down vote if the question is offensive/makes-no-sense or is just really off on any point the asker is trying to make?
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Empirical information tells me that down votes are only for my questions ;)– The FreemasonCommented Apr 11, 2014 at 14:20
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1 Answer
From the help center
Voting up a question or answer signals to the rest of the community that a post is interesting, well-researched, and useful, while voting down a post signals the opposite: that the post contains wrong information, is poorly researched, or fails to communicate information. The more that people vote on a post, the more certain future visitors can be of the quality of information contained within that post – not to mention that upvotes are a great way to thank the author of a good post for the time and effort put into writing it!
That's basically all the guidance you're given. If it's useful, vote it up, if it's not, vote it down.
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4The only thing I would add to this is a note about not voting based on doctrinal positions that you (dis)agree with but on answer quality and suitability.– Caleb ModCommented Apr 7, 2014 at 18:57
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@Caleb On principle you're exactly right. In practice, the community doesn't always adhere to that. Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 19:25
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@TheFreemason Of course it doesn't. But that is no excuse for not taking the chance to educate on proper voting. All we have to do is teach/train enough percentage of site users and the bad vote reasons will get buried in the noise. That's how the system works.– Caleb ModCommented Apr 10, 2014 at 23:40
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Agreed, you are describing the way it should be and I commend you on your effort to teach. Commented Apr 11, 2014 at 2:47