The thing I think it is most appropriate to think of votes as meaning is something like “people in a conversation smiling at me, or kinda leaning away from me, or looking a bit annoyed, or maybe calling their friend over to join the conversation.”
Having karma gives you a rough sense of how people are responding to you. This isn’t super detailed information, but I do think it’s better than not having it. If you asked people not to smile, or frown, without giving an explanation why, they’d end up adopting neutral expressions all the time.
I don’t think it’s at all ‘petty’ that people have limited time and would give less feedback. (Unless you were specifically referring to the ‘people complaining about voting patterns and taking revenge for downvotes part’. In which case I agree that would reflect poorly, but also I’m skeptical about claims that this is so important that it means the project has failed.)
I do currently lean towards requiring reasons for Strong Votes, but the whole point of regular votes is to be less effort than commenting.
I might be open to a more general version where providing a reason for your vote gives the vote a bit more weight, or something, but that’s more work to implement.
I think perhaps just understanding how the voters karma really impacts their vote would be helpful. I was unaware of that until Dagon mentioned it but it’s a black box to me and I have no clue of what the output of the box is.
My original thought was prompted by the idea we might get more value if we could assess the quality of the vote. If I up or down vote anything I don’t think that should be a valuable indicator; I am not the bight bulb in the room. However, there are a lot of bight bulbs here so thinking their vote would carry the same weight as mine seems lacking—just from a purely selfish self assessment of reactions to my input.
The thing I think it is most appropriate to think of votes as meaning is something like “people in a conversation smiling at me, or kinda leaning away from me, or looking a bit annoyed, or maybe calling their friend over to join the conversation.”
Having karma gives you a rough sense of how people are responding to you. This isn’t super detailed information, but I do think it’s better than not having it. If you asked people not to smile, or frown, without giving an explanation why, they’d end up adopting neutral expressions all the time.
I don’t think it’s at all ‘petty’ that people have limited time and would give less feedback. (Unless you were specifically referring to the ‘people complaining about voting patterns and taking revenge for downvotes part’. In which case I agree that would reflect poorly, but also I’m skeptical about claims that this is so important that it means the project has failed.)
I do currently lean towards requiring reasons for Strong Votes, but the whole point of regular votes is to be less effort than commenting.
I might be open to a more general version where providing a reason for your vote gives the vote a bit more weight, or something, but that’s more work to implement.
That is a good view I think.
I think perhaps just understanding how the voters karma really impacts their vote would be helpful. I was unaware of that until Dagon mentioned it but it’s a black box to me and I have no clue of what the output of the box is.
My original thought was prompted by the idea we might get more value if we could assess the quality of the vote. If I up or down vote anything I don’t think that should be a valuable indicator; I am not the bight bulb in the room. However, there are a lot of bight bulbs here so thinking their vote would carry the same weight as mine seems lacking—just from a purely selfish self assessment of reactions to my input.
Can anyone share what the weighting on votes is?
This blogpost, which explains the voting weights, might be what you’re looking for.
Thanks! Interesting read and helpful to understand. You get an up vote ;-)