Post History

Is "voting different on Meta" for Codidact?

Stack Overflow's help section offers the following guidance for its meta site:

> ### Voting is different on meta.
>
> Like normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta allows members to vote on questions and answers. For most posts, votes reflect the perceived usefulness: well-written, well-reasoned, well-researched posts tend to get more attention and more upvotes. Highly-voted and frequently-linked posts may become part of the community-curated FAQ or codified as part of the site’s Help Center.
>
> *Unlike* normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta invites the community to discuss, debate and propose changes to the way the community itself behaves, as well as how the software itself works. **On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement** with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself.

In practice, I've found that posts on Meta sites on Stack Exchange tend to get downvoted for some other reasons that also wouldn't be applicable to the main Q&A. For example:

* Announcements from staff about company reorganization, policy changes, etc. get downvoted to express displeasure with decisions that were made, or even with the company generally.

* New *proposals* for features from the staff are typically treated as discussions rather than "feature requests" (since they might already be in early A/B testing by the time anything is posted about it), but get downvoted for the same reason of disagreement with the feature design.

* Bug reports get downvoted not only to indicate that a bug is not reproducible or that a behaviour is by design, but also to express a feeling that the bug is trivial or low priority.

* Discussion posts get downvoted because the OP seems to express a stance that others disagree with, or because of a suspicion of ulterior motives.

* Support questions get downvoted because OP is perceived as being to blame for the situation (e.g. people looking to have disciplinary actions lifted).

Are these uses of downvotes desirable on a Meta site? Do we already vote like this; and if so, should we change our ways?

Any other feedback about effective use of votes (up or down) on Meta is also appreciated - let's discuss this fully.