Why do people down vote legitimate questions?

Question

I've been noticing a trend where people are down vote legitimate questions. Sure some are asking something covered easily in the lesson, but not everyone gains understanding the same way, so they ask a question in hope of getting the answer in a different way (which to be fair, SoloLearn sometimes can confuse simple concepts).
I find myself up voting legitimate questions just to balance out the bad apples.

Answer 1

"What is HTML?"
"Is the certificate useful?"
"What is prefix/postfix operator?"
"What does <span> do?"

etc, has at least a few hundred instance of similar threads. While I do my best to link them to existing threads, I wouldn't be surprised if they get community downvotes (even if those questions were indeed legit and programming-related).

That said, I think users should be responsible to cast their own reason as to why their downvotes are given. Duplicate question? Can be easily Googled? It doesn't take long to specify things.

Answer 2

i don't know what questions you are talking about in particular, but i've noticed that sometimes someone asks things that you can surely understand if you would think about it a little or with a fast and easy google search.
In this case maybe it's good to down vote so the asker could easily understand that he can find out the answer alone, because he's capable of it.
Then i don't want to say that beginners shouldn't ask anything, instead i think it is a great habit to ask when you have not found the way to solve a problem even after a lot of attempts.