We could also run some simple statistics. For instance, what is the average score of one’s posts and comments overall, as a simple metric of one’s quality of posting, versus sheer quantity (or at least how well those posts are received on average).
But I’m really more interested in knowing why people up or downvote posts, I’m here to learn stuff too, and sometimes it may not be obvious why a post was up or downvoted, be it mine or someone’s else. Even though the voting score represents the community consensus, something is amiss. In some cases, one of us may simply lack a necessary insight as to one topic in particular, to understand what that consensus judges to be obvious and straightforward in that case. If our goal is to learn and teach, then it’s our duty to make it as easy and accessible for everyone to grasp those insights, and understand the reasoning behind the consensus.
The way slashdot used to handle this is, an upvote or downvote had a name attached to it—you’d select ‘insightful’ or ‘funny’ or ‘interesting’ or ‘troll’ (amongst others) so there would be at least some reason attached to each vote.
We could also run some simple statistics. For instance, what is the average score of one’s posts and comments overall, as a simple metric of one’s quality of posting, versus sheer quantity (or at least how well those posts are received on average).
But I’m really more interested in knowing why people up or downvote posts, I’m here to learn stuff too, and sometimes it may not be obvious why a post was up or downvoted, be it mine or someone’s else. Even though the voting score represents the community consensus, something is amiss. In some cases, one of us may simply lack a necessary insight as to one topic in particular, to understand what that consensus judges to be obvious and straightforward in that case. If our goal is to learn and teach, then it’s our duty to make it as easy and accessible for everyone to grasp those insights, and understand the reasoning behind the consensus.
The way slashdot used to handle this is, an upvote or downvote had a name attached to it—you’d select ‘insightful’ or ‘funny’ or ‘interesting’ or ‘troll’ (amongst others) so there would be at least some reason attached to each vote.