Why do people vote negative on news items?

[wildcardd]

Just a question. Some articles deserve it, but other items just baffle me.

So it brings up a question I have been wanting to ask for a while:

Why do people vote negative on news items?

 

[0098386]

To restore balance, a kind of OCD perhaps?

 

[Jaffa Cake]

Some people are only happy when they're complaining about something.

 

[Baron58]

Why do people vote negative on news items?

Because they're wankers.

 

[alphaod]

What else do emo kids do? Cut themselves and vote negative ****.

 

[Chundles]

Do people still pay attention to that stuff? I've never cared about the voting in my life.

I'd vote a story about Apple giving everyone a 32GB 3G iPhone for free with free upgrades for life negative just to be a smartarse.

 

[Doctor Q]

From the FAQ: What do the positive and negative ratings on the front page mean?

There are a number of other Feedback threads for this same question. I doubt we'll ever have a completely satisfactory answer.

 

[Kebabselector]

You can guarantee a Microsoft news item will have plenty of negatives.

No idea why that is though.

 

[brad.c]

Conversely to Chundles, I'd vote positive on a iPhones Cause Brain Warts story just to be a dumbarse.

 

[Wild-Bill]

Mostly retards with nothing better to do than to vote negative on items that clearly don't deserve a negative whatsoever.

 

[Bobdude161]

Even if MR posted a news item saying "All cancers and diseases cease to exist!!!111!!!!!1!!" It would receive a lot of positives, but you can always count on that handful to click negative. Everyone has their reasons. Maybe they wanted to die of malaria, who knows.

 

[CalBoy]

I think a simple answer can be found in the complexity of the average MR New story.

For example, imagine a story which announces "Back to School Promotion Begins Today- Mac sales expected to double" or something to that effect.

Many would vote positive because of the prospect of being able to get a free iPod, or because they are AAPL shareholders and like the idea of doubling Mac sales.

Conversely, some might vote negative because they expected the sale to begin earlier, or if they expected the sale to feature newly updated macbooks/pros. Or if they wanted the iPhone to be included in the promotion, etc.

Most stories by their nature offer nuance and conflicting sets of interests, and for some that can elicit a negative response while for others it can generate a positive one.

So in short, the ratings are nothing more than an expression of the vast number of possible reactions any one of us could have to any number of things we hear on a given day.

 

[yadmonkey]

Because human beings are completely addicted to judging everything and especially each other.

 

[crazytom]

I typically base my vote on the quality of discussion going on in the thread. If there's a lot of spam, I'll vote negative. If there's some healthy discussion of issues, I'll vote positive. Just my $.02.

 

[Hawkeye411]

Dyslexia?

 

[motulist]

The only time I even look at the rating a thread has is when there's an OS X update, that way I can get an idea of if the OS is causing many new problems.

 

[exabytes18]

I vote negatively for the soul purpose of spawning these threads. Vista fanboys like myself get a kick out of your concerns for trivial matters such as the precise reasoning of why people vote a generally accepted positive story negative.

Actually, I'm not a Vista fanboy, nor have I ever voted on a story, but I do think that some of the negative votes come from those types.