I agree that it’s misleading. One thing that’s been mooted—I don’t know whether it’s in any way likely to happen, but it seems like it would be an improvement—is changing from “a level-n user’s vote is worth n points” to “a level-n user can vote up to n times on anything”. Then if you wanted to use your awesome multi-voting power (1) you’d have to expend at least a little extra effort, (2) you would have the option of giving intermediate numbers of votes, and (3) it would no longer be wrong to say “this got 7 upvotes and 3 downvotes” or whatever.
The analogue-karma-display idea is intriguing. My immediate feeling is that it would be really hard to make this comprehensible, though.
I agree that it’s misleading. One thing that’s been mooted—I don’t know whether it’s in any way likely to happen, but it seems like it would be an improvement—is changing from “a level-n user’s vote is worth n points” to “a level-n user can vote up to n times on anything”. Then if you wanted to use your awesome multi-voting power (1) you’d have to expend at least a little extra effort, (2) you would have the option of giving intermediate numbers of votes, and (3) it would no longer be wrong to say “this got 7 upvotes and 3 downvotes” or whatever.
The analogue-karma-display idea is intriguing. My immediate feeling is that it would be really hard to make this comprehensible, though.