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This is an announcement/notice about the meaning of voting on the meta.

  • Up generally means I agree
  • Down generally means I disagree

This is a subtle difference with the main site. One should not be surprised when a question or answer is down voted on the meta. It simply means that somebody has disagreed.

Of course in extreme circumstances it still carries its meaning of low quality. Especially for very low quality posts. Do not be discouraged to vote.

Vote, vote and vote!

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  • $\begingroup$ I completely agree. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Nov 13, 2014 at 1:05
  • $\begingroup$ This is true sometimes, but not always, which is unfortunately one of the most confusing aspects of meta. Specifically, it's usually true for feature-request posts, and often true for discussion answers and some discussion questions. It's rarely true for support and bug. Generally speaking, if the post contains an opinion, people vote based on whether they agree or disagree, but if it doesn't it's based on the post quality (e.g. for bugs, reproduceability and accurate description of the issue). $\endgroup$
    – Logan M
    Nov 13, 2014 at 8:05

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The meaning of votes on meta is what we decide for them to mean. Some sites operate as said in OP but not all; or at least to quite different degrees as already said in some sense by Logan Maingi.

I certainly agree that down-votes on meta can and should be cast a lot more freely, but the "downvote express disagree" idea is in my opinion somewhat problematic for several reasons (I only give the most clear-cut one) especially when combined with a call to vote a lot.

Suppose I write: "I think we should do X only in case condition Y is met."

Then A thinking we should do X always and N thinking we should never do X, both disagree with me while having completely contradictory views.

So what a downvote on "I think we should do X only in case condition Y is met" really means is anybodies guess. (This is not some contrived example, I got dv on posts I consider middle-of-the-road positions where I had and have no idea in which direction the dissent was.)

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