Correcting posts to remove downvotes

Question

re: What is curried tapenade?

First, let me say that I was not aware that recipes were protected under copyright law and learned something today and for that I am appreciative. I will not copy/paste recipes anymore and will instead link to the original source.

That said, as a very new member still trying to get his water wings, I'm sad that I went from 51 to 47 today because I was trying to help someone out.

I asked in the post if there was any way to correct the answer and get my downvotes removed somehow. It's very off-putting to try to be helpful and essentially get penalized for it. I understand why the downvotes came, but I'd like to try to reverse them. I was truly just trying to help the OP, which I thought was the point of this site.

Unfortunately I don't have anything else to add to this particular discussion because I know very little about tapenades, I was just looking at threads that didn't have a lot of responses and trying to help them out. So I can't really edit the post, just delete. Would deleting remove downvotes, or would the downvoters have to explicitly remove them? Would they be able to once I deleted?

tl;dr: Any way to "undo" my post and get back my points that I lost because of downvoting? I realize it was my mistake, and consider myself schooled about copyright law, if that matters.

Answer 1

Hi Stephen. First of all, thanks for contributing!

Here are some things to keep in mind while using this site. Down-votes are not an attack on you as a person, nor even an attack on your answer. It is a subjective judgement of the quality of your answer by a member of this community. Like virtually everything done here, a down-vote can be undone. It can either be removed, or turned into an up-vote. However, once 5 minutes have elapsed a vote cannot be changed, unless the answer/question is edited.

You can edit your own answer by clicking the edit link below it. It is completely up to the persons who voted your answer down if they want to change their vote. I typically do, and don't see any reason not to in this case.

Regarding copyright-fu. First, I'm not a lawyer. However, as noted by the U.S. copyright office here: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html "a recipe ... accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook ..." is protected under copyright law. In the absence of any license or other indicator it is considered an "all rights reserved" license. Meaning, you must have the express permission of the author to reproduce the work. Even in the absence of a copyright symbol (©) or statement, copyright is assumed. That said, there are conditions called fair use which permit the reproduction of parts (e.g. a small excerpt) of a work without author permission.

I'd like to be clear that I don't expect you or any new-comer to know this stuff. It's hardly common knowledge, and that'd be a ridiculous expectation to have.

Here are some rough guidelines I use when copying a work from another source:

• If I'm referencing a blog post, article, or wikipedia entry I'll stick to a brief excerpt and provide a link to the full source. Sometimes I'll just summarize and provide the link to the full article.
• If I'm quoting a recipe I'll sometimes copy the ingredient list, because it makes a better answer than a simple "go look here: http://example.com". In most cases I'll also contribute some knowledge or experience of my own.
• I try to minimize my answering of questions in which I don't have any first-hand knowledge or experience, which would involve me simply providing a link I googled. I do this occasionally, but I always make it clear that I'm doing so, and it's usually due to there being a lack of any good answers to the question.

Answer 2

You need only click the edit link at the bottom of your post (under the tags). That won't automatically undo downvotes, but most people are reasonable and if they see your edit (and the edit is good) then they'll reverse them.

You can also delete your post by clicking the delete link. That won't automatically undo the rep loss from the downvotes, but if you're especially concerned about the 4 points, what you can do is click the flag button on one of your posts, select "Requires Moderator Attention", and for your message, ask to have your reputation recalculated. This will cause any rep loss (or gain) from deleted posts to be reverted.

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I would also like to point out (as I originally did in the comments) that the majority of traffic on Stack Exchange sites comes from Google, and that questions/answers on these sites tend to rise to the top of the Google results very quickly.

For that reason - as well as general politeness (you may not see it this way, but it is slightly demeaning to suggest that the person who asked the question wasn't smart enough to Google it himself) - we do not encourage Googled answers unless you are adding content of your own and/or consolidating information from several different places.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, the question was created in a way where it was begging for a Google answer and you being new to the site saw an opportunity to participate and were dragged into it.

I'm not a particular fan of the "What is X?" because all you need to do is go to google, search X and you will be given plenty of results.

All I can advise is, answer questions that interest you, make you want to do a little bit of research on, or already have some knowledge regarding the question.

Don't do someone's Googling for them.

Now, using Google to find a reference to back up your statement, go right ahead.

If you have an opinion about something, write it up in your own words, then search on Google for someone that agrees with you and point out you aren't the only one saying it.