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Sometimes it happened to me to see questions/answers downvoted without a comment about it.

I think it is more useful for the user who gets a downvote to understand why he/she got it instead of just loosing reputation points. In this way that user can understand what was wrong with the question/asnwer he/she posted and avoid to make the same error again, whereas at the time being the downvote is useful only for the readers to understand which quetions/answers worth the reading.

So my question is: is it possible to add a rule about this? I mean, make the comment mandatory in case of downvote to explain what was wrong with it.

  • Note that in Meta, by convention, downvotes indicate disagreement with a proposal and are not an indication that a bad Question has been asked. (Yes, I am your downvoter.) – hardmath Nov 25 '14 at 14:40
  • Yes thank you, I knew that...I had some readings before posting my question to be sure it has been not already asked :) – Rhei Nov 25 '14 at 14:53
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On the one hand, I agree that it is bad form to downvote without leaving constructive criticism. On the other hand, forcing down-voters to leave a comment also exposes the identity of the voter. Voting is intentionally designed to be anonymous to avoid many other potential pitfalls. See these posts for more details:

Is down voting supposed to be anonymous?

Why are votes anonymous? Let's make with the transparency and have them publicly attributed

  • Is it not possibile to find a way to hide the name of the author of the comment related to the downvote? – Rhei Nov 22 '14 at 19:13
  • Not to my knowledge. – Paul♦ Nov 22 '14 at 19:20
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    In biology SE we generally discourage downvoting without providing a reason at least when voting on newbie questions. Most of the times a new user is not aware of the scope and rules of the site. – WYSIWYG Feb 17 '15 at 6:37

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