Timeline for If more users could vote, would they engage more? Testing 1 reputation voting on some sites
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
142 events
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| Apr 3, 2024 at 14:23 | history | edited | HoidStaffMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 286 characters in body |
| Oct 31, 2023 at 23:59 | history | unprotected | Catija | ||
| Oct 27, 2023 at 3:15 | comment | added | Catija | ... "it's been a month"? understatement of the year. I'm not doing anything any more. :P | |
| Oct 27, 2023 at 3:10 | comment | added | Catija | You clearly didn't read the question, @Mazura - this change would allow everyone, regardless of reputation, to both up and downvote any post they like - even the question title says just "vote", not "upvote". I'm not really sure why you're commenting without doing the bare minimum of even attempting to understand the proposed change. | |
| Oct 27, 2023 at 3:06 | comment | added | Catija | @Mazura ... uh... what? I'm really confused what you mean by that. | |
| Oct 21, 2023 at 1:00 | history | edited | CommunityBot | | |
| Oct 19, 2023 at 10:46 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Oct 18, 2023 at 15:47 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor | @user3840170 Yes: Arqade, Graphic Design, potentially Pets as JG mentioned in the comment above. | |
| Oct 18, 2023 at 14:30 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek | I'd spoken to Cat about volunteering Pets - partially cause we're probably small enough to both both benefit and contain any damage, and partially cause I personally had a great working relationship with Catija. I'm still processing and deciding what I should tell my fellow mods and community and how we'd want to proceed | |
| Oct 18, 2023 at 14:08 | comment | added | user3840170 | And by the way, has any site actually volunteered for the experiment? | |
| Oct 17, 2023 at 17:03 | comment | added | brhans | Is there any point in continuing discussion here now that @Catija got laid off in the most recent round of lay-offs? Is any other SE staff member going to take over? Is this experiment still on-going? | |
| Oct 9, 2023 at 23:10 | comment | added | Kimball | @Catija I just mean that, on MathOverflow, I think unwarranted upvoting has already been increasing over the past year or two. So I suspect, for that site, lowering barriers would exacerbate this. (Of course it could just be my opinion on what a quality post is is too old-fashioned.) | |
| Oct 9, 2023 at 18:55 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Kimball I'm not sure I understand - they're the same people who've been voting - we haven't actually made any changes yet. If you feel like they're voting inappropriately, then the current reputation barriers don't actually prevent problematic voting, they just hide it because there's less of it. One of the goals of this test is to figure that out but... | |
| Oct 9, 2023 at 18:32 | comment | added | Kimball | On MathOverflow, I've noticed a number of questions lately with 1 or 2 upvotes that I don't think are worthy of any upvotes, and probably wouldn't have gotten any several years ago. Which means, IMO, at least some number of newer users are voting in different ways. | |
| Oct 6, 2023 at 20:34 | answer | added | starballMod | timeline score: 5 | |
| Oct 2, 2023 at 13:23 | answer | added | JRE | timeline score: 19 | |
| Oct 1, 2023 at 17:38 | answer | added | Thomas Ward | timeline score: 10 | |
| S Oct 1, 2023 at 2:03 | history | bounty ended | 41686d6564 | ||
| S Oct 1, 2023 at 2:03 | history | notice removed | 41686d6564 | ||
| Sep 29, 2023 at 19:18 | answer | added | Jon Ericson | timeline score: 33 | |
| Sep 29, 2023 at 16:18 | comment | added | Tim | Of course they would! But mainly to uv/dv q and a. Which I don't believe would enhance much on SE. From personal experience, it takes some time to get accustomed to the vagaries and workings in any case, so a bad move, imo. | |
| Sep 27, 2023 at 1:48 | comment | added | BigMistake | By nature of this being on meta, opinion will inevitably be biased towards people who use StackExchange quite a lot. In terms of % of users, most would probably support this. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 20:05 | comment | added | user400654 | @DenisG.Labrecque you can comment on any place where comments are allowed on a question you've asked. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 19:53 | comment | added | starball Mod | @SoftwareEngineer it's hard to really understand you unless you explain why you think this change would be harmful. you could either write up an answer post doing so, or vote up other answer posts that you agree with. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 17:17 | comment | added | Denis G. Labrecque | @JourneymanGeek maybe my recollection is wrong, but does that mean you can't comment on answers to your question? Because I remember breathing a sigh of relief when getting the commenting privilege. It's been a few years. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 14:46 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @SoftwareEngineer Considering that the entire purpose of the site was to avoid paywalled content only being accessible to an elite few "professionals", that seems to me a significantly larger change than merely allowing more people to vote. Millions of people are professionals but have not participated, so your statement isn't even factual - there is no correlation between site participation and expertise and to continue to assert that there is, is fallacy. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 13:57 | answer | added | Hans Kesting | timeline score: 12 | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 13:09 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | @DenisG.Labrecque you can always comment on your own posts - for posts by others, quite often, especially with older posts, there's little point to comments, especially if OP had left or lost interest in the network long ago | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 12:33 | comment | added | Denis G. Labrecque | To me the most difficult barrier to overcome was being unable to comment, because it was impossible to ask for clarification. But personally I have not problem with voting being a privilege. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 11:47 | comment | added | theforestecologist | @KevinB don't I know it! You're right. Experts make up a small percentage of any population on SE. However, the sub-5 rep population appears to have the lowest percentage of experts. That's a lot of people voting for the wrong reasons! Look at any SE site: the number of 1-rep users is often 100s of times greater than even the 10+ users. It would just be a flood of [even more] poor quality voting from people who haven't taken the tour and don't know what a "good" question or answer looks like. | |
| Sep 26, 2023 at 5:51 | comment | added | Flater | When push comes to shove, is the priority in getting an increase in engagement, or an increase in the quality of the engagement? I'm leaving the door open to arguments that the latter might be achieved through the former in the long run - but the general pushback you're receiving here is that the current actions seem to strive for the former at the cost of the latter. Being clear on the priorities here will help address those concerns. | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 17:53 | comment | added | user400654 | @theforestecologist earning 15 or 125 rep doesn't somehow prove someone has expertise... nor does it increase the likelihood that they do. | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 17:38 | comment | added | theforestecologist | Is the purpose of SE to generate clicks and participation? or is to generate high-quality and accurate information about topics. I think we all know the answer is the latter. Allowing essentially anyone to vote might increase revenue through greater activity, but why should someone with no expertise (and only a strong opinion or emotion) be able to vote? This is a dumb idea that directly works against the mission of SE. Big downvote from me | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 15:59 | comment | added | ScottishTapWater | @QHarr - this thread is getting a little long so I've not read everything yet so sorry if you've already addressed this. I have faith in newbies being able to vote for good answers. At the end of the day, if they found an answer helpful and it sorted their issue, even if it's not perfect, it's worth a vote in my book. I'd have more concerns with them being able to vote on questions | |
| Sep 25, 2023 at 15:52 | comment | added | Sayse | Pick any tag on any page you want, wait until it has "10 new questions", how many of them are clear, useful and show research effort? how many are unclear/not useful or lack research effort? This is one of the reasons I don't vote because its very often that none of them meet the upvote criteria and half meet the downvote criteria and all that negativity is bad for mental health | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 22:53 | comment | added | starball Mod | while I don't quite understand what user16145658 is saying, it brings up a question for me: what is considered "inappropriate voting" here and how is it determined? does it just mean serial voting / voting fraud detected based on the serial/fraudulent voting detection tools? Or does it extend to voting practices that are simply discouraged / strongly discouraged but still currently acceptable, and to detection methods like "user said in their vote explanation that they are revenge downvoting"? Is the definition covered by the CoC like meta.stackexchange.com/conduct/disruptive-use ? | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 18:29 | comment | added | Proscionexium | If you want to apply s such a change, first test in on mother Meta itself. You may get the glimpses of the consequences. | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 15:17 | answer | added | Rubén | timeline score: 8 | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 13:01 | answer | added | Michael Freidgeim | timeline score: -4 | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 12:59 | answer | added | EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine | timeline score: 7 | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 5:25 | answer | added | galacticninja | timeline score: -1 | |
| Sep 24, 2023 at 3:35 | answer | added | Lars Bosteen | timeline score: -3 | |
| S Sep 23, 2023 at 22:45 | history | bounty started | 41686d6564 | ||
| S Sep 23, 2023 at 22:45 | history | notice added | 41686d6564 | Reward existing answer | |
| Sep 23, 2023 at 19:34 | comment | added | FShrike | @Butthosenewbuttonsthough.. it is debatable how good the current balance is | |
| Sep 23, 2023 at 19:33 | comment | added | FShrike | The voting system suffers from a flaw - lots of people will see a good question and simply not be moved to vote on it. Speaking of the mathematics stack exchange here, many good questions get left behind in the dust because they were too niche to receive a quick obvious answer or massive popular attention (e.g. early undergrad or integral or basic real analysis questions get very large, undue favourable attention, or things that touch on a common but basic confusion). We do need more engagement, but not from new accounts - think of the bot issues | |
| Sep 23, 2023 at 15:06 | comment | added | It all makes cents | If user participation is the primary objective, then perhaps participation points should be awarded. Five points for logging in to a Stack Exchange site. Five points for each comment left with no loss of points if comments are deleted or removed. For every thousand points, one receives a $10 Visa or Mastercard gift card. | |
| Sep 23, 2023 at 0:01 | answer | added | FuzzyChef | timeline score: 19 | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 23:31 | comment | added | FuzzyChef | Yeah, I was just struck by the irony that, on a thread about lowering rep for up/down voting, I don't have enough rep to vote (despite being a reviewer/editor on two SEs). Meta-meta has very tight controls over who can post and vote. | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 21:27 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | And before y'all misunderstand me as saying "NEWS FLASH!!! Catija thinks users with 1 rep should have a voice on MSE"... Well... I mean... I'm not not saying that. But I'm also tired of people implying 1 rep users aren't "real" users or don't care about the platform and content. Some don't... but would people who don't care follow a link in the bulletin and try to vote? Many care. They just don't necessarily care to create content. And votes on Meta don't mean much. I'm more likely to make a decision based on the strength of an argument than the score of the post. | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 21:20 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @FuzzyChef We want to get info about how voting is used and misused when the reputation is lower. I actually think changing it on MSE would be really useful because right now voting here only reflects what people with rep think. The 10k tools show, in fact, that this question would be much higher scored as these very users upvote it 2:1. The main reason I wouldn't want it to be tested here is that the test is designed to understand the impact on main sites. Data we collect here wouldn't apply to Main sites because voting on meta is different. | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 20:49 | comment | added | FuzzyChef | Why don't you start by lowering the voting thresholds for this Meta and see how it goes first? And if you don't want to do that, why do you think it's a good idea to inflict it on the SEs? | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 15:58 | answer | added | EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine | timeline score: 10 | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 14:27 | answer | added | Fredy31 | timeline score: 8 | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 10:51 | answer | added | mirekphd | timeline score: -4 | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 8:06 | answer | added | Dmitry Grigoryev | timeline score: -1 | |
| Sep 22, 2023 at 6:56 | answer | added | Daviid | timeline score: -3 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 18:06 | answer | added | Hem Bhagat | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 17:37 | answer | added | Euri Pinhollow | timeline score: -1 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 16:43 | comment | added | TylerH | The one place where a version of this would definitely be a good idea is Meta Stack Exchange. Make your MSE rep tied to the network total rep (remove MSE-independent rep) and then make upvotes and downvotes free, but keep the rep thresholds for voting up and down the same. | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 15:21 | answer | added | TylerH | timeline score: 65 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 13:53 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Richard if we get to the point where privileges are no longer tied to rep and rep becomes a recognition of the community's reception of the content a user has created, I'd be more likely to consider that option. But I'm pretty sure such a change would have an outsized impact on highly active users who rep cap regularly and probably don't really need additional incentives to participate. | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 13:53 | comment | added | mbomb007 | @starball It's 100 for downvote privs. You can set R = 15 for upvote. | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 12:19 | comment | added | Richard | Maybe worth removing the vote cap also. There's no point me getting an additional 50 votes per answer when I'm hitting the cap pretty much daily anyway. | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 9:20 | comment | added | pilchard | The voting system is already overburdened in the functionality that it encapsulates. It is the sole unmoderated, public marker of quality, interest, accuracy and also often stands as proxy for feedback on the user/poster's behavior. This breadth already points to a broken system and that is before one considers the 'point' values assigned to it and the privileges those points afford the user. A single highly rated question regardless of its quality will afford the poster vastly more power on the site than a user who diligently closes duplicates for years. | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 9:04 | answer | added | ꓢPArcheon | timeline score: 21 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 8:59 | answer | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | timeline score: 18 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 7:33 | answer | added | Mad Scientist | timeline score: 11 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 7:31 | answer | added | starballMod | timeline score: 33 | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 6:41 | comment | added | Stephan Kolassa | FWIW, we are discussing whether CrossValidated wants to volunteer here. Currently, we have 8 nays and 1 aye. The discussion there mirrors the one here. | |
| Sep 21, 2023 at 0:47 | answer | added | bta | timeline score: 73 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 21:51 | answer | added | Ingo Steinke | timeline score: -9 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 21:50 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Catija "participation in other moderation or contribution activities rather than just voting alone" I feel like this would be a second order effect (cool they let me vote, so let's find out what else I can do). I'd be more concerned with direct impacts. Voting is a quality assessment. Post quality isn't directly influenced by it but post order would be. Result of this experiment could be a better or worse ordering where high quality posts are more or less often on top. Maybe voting is a limiting factor and we need more votes to get a better ordering. But I'm not sure about that. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 20:29 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @wizzwizz4 As far as I'm aware, unregistered users can not vote, regardless of reputation. My searching for a reference turned up this from 2010, but I have no reason to doubt that the policy has changed, despite it not appearing in other FAQs about voting (that I could find) | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 20:23 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @starball I'm guessing the Teams you're on are largely centered around SE/SO-centric groups who may use downvotes quite frequently. In that sense, your statement is valid - and I've seen them on such Teams myself. But most Teams have very little downvoting or closing or other moderation of posts. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 20:22 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Sayse I think attributing Teams data to public sites would be a ... poor choice. The average Team is a group of coworkers within a company - people you may have personal relationships with. Also, you actually still need 125 reputation on a Team to downvote, so even if we set voting practices aside, it wouldn't give us any info about downvotes. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 20:21 | comment | added | starball Mod | @Sayse every team I've been on (I think) has had a "upvote each other so everyone can get voting privileges" Q&A. basically, a sanctioned voting ring. I don't see how you'd get pure data for teams because of that. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 20:09 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | I thought unregistered users could currently vote, if they got to 15 reputation. Is that not the case? | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 19:34 | answer | added | willeM_ Van Onsem | timeline score: 16 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 19:32 | comment | added | user400654 | Voting rings, yea, it is the front line defense against voting rings. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 19:20 | answer | added | user400654 | timeline score: 6 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 18:15 | answer | added | Stevoisiak | timeline score: -3 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 15:55 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | @Catija ONLY going by the title "engagement" when they get frustrated they leave so engagement = 0; More downvotes to unaccustomed users means more leave due to this human factor - not new info obviously to anyone at SO. These are hard problems made harder by large culture differences of users. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 15:42 | comment | added | GreenGiant | Could you run this experiment for a couple weeks, but keep track of the votes cast by these low-rep users, and when the experiment is over, undo all of those votes (after collecting whatever data you need)? | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 15:07 | comment | added | You Old Fool | @Catija - did you just call me Butt Hose?? Lol! Just kidding, it's funny though. I believe you but I think you have to admit that the network has been making a slew of detrimental changes and ignoring the community feedback for a while now. That certainly has caused ME to draw back a bit. I guess those new buttons aren't helping as much as was expected. I still hate clicking them. But yeah, let's let some 0 reppers click them to make up for it. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 14:48 | comment | added | Sayse | Why do you even need to find volunteers, wouldnt the results be similar to an SO Teams? (with rose tinted glasses since probably less sock puppetry) | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 14:31 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @MarkSchultheiss Thanks - that's what I thought you were getting at. While there are some improvements I have on my backlog to get built in that might address your points, and I'm well aware that this happens on many sites, I'm not sure how this relates to the subject at hand. This wouldn't impact when a user could delete their own question. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 14:13 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Butthose Voting on most sites is on a downward trend from the data I've seen, as is the percentage of users with the ability to vote. I invite you to check out some of my responses to answers below because I think there's a fallacy in your statement - our current system doesn't actually judge whether someone can vote accurately or not. I know that framing this as "increasing engagement" can seem like we've pulled away from content quality in search of views - but voting is the core way we determine content quality and if few people can vote, who's assuring good content rises to the top? | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 13:53 | answer | added | Resistance Is Futile | timeline score: 27 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 13:50 | comment | added | You Old Fool | What is so important about users "engaging more"? I think at some point you have to choose between content quantity and quality. The current voting system seems to strike a healthy balance - why then are you pushing for more quantity? | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 13:25 | comment | added | Resistance Is Futile | @Nij HNQ has limits. The scale of the voting this proposal allows is the problem. Also the spammers that will get free reign. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 13:19 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | CONT: then the effort to comment and vote by OTHER users gets lost and the same cycle occurs on the NEW question leading to further negative experience by both users. Action: research deleted questions and comment/vote time cycles and NEW questions shortly after perhaps. I know doing that is time consuming because I do that in my job with data sets that can insert logs in the millions in short time frames but I have to do so. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 13:15 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | @Catija Reference to my statement regarding removed questions. Often (very often) new users put in questions that lack clarity, code or some such and also often they get comments from others as clarification questions or "missing code to reproduce" or other often symptomatic of not reading the site guidance they get pointed to the "How to ask..." post - as a result they after a few of these get downvoted questions which they see as a reputation hit. I have often the seen them react by deleting the question then they ask a NEW question often with same clarity issues in part. CONT: | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 12:45 | comment | added | Nij | @A.R. "I'm concerned that new users may not be able to recognize a good answer from a bad one and might upvote convenient answers over correct answers." If you have ever looked at the HNQ, this should not be a concern, it should be a known fact. It happens all the time, and if users earning the association bonus are free to do it already, I don't see any difference in letting every new user do it. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 12:17 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @NoDataDumpNoContribution The closest this post gets is the test plan. Many of the success and failure metrics will be determined once the sites have been selected. The test plan specifically includes various checks on voting practices and user research to assess whether there is a change in perception post quality before and after the change. We outline more checks related to the things you mention than engagement. Also, I'm personally interested in whether voting leads to participation in other moderation or contribution activities rather than just voting alone. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 10:10 | answer | added | HolyBlackCat | timeline score: 25 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 9:50 | answer | added | NotThatGuy | timeline score: 22 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 8:57 | comment | added | starball Mod | @roganjosh not a fever dream see the PostFeedback table schema. "Collects up and down votes from anonymous visitor and/or unregistered users". There's also the 10k mod-tools for seeing posts with interesting anonymous vote ratios. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 8:53 | comment | added | roganjosh | Somewhere tucked deep in the back of my mind, there is a SEDE query that can reveal "symbolic" votes on your posts. I could be imagining this whole thing, but I thought all users could register a vote, it's just that the reputation barrier determines whether it is counted or not. If this is correct, I remember being horrified to see 10s if not 100s of votes against my posts, both questions and answers. Was this just a fever dream? | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 7:43 | comment | added | starball Mod | @Tim obligatory link to Why isn't providing feedback mandatory on downvotes, and why are requests suggesting such negatively received? | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 7:34 | comment | added | Tim | Readers of M, P&T will know how much I abhor unexplained dvs. Which will increase in number when all and sundry are allowed to dish them out, Dished out mainly by folk who probably are pretty clueless as to how the site works. But given powers for no effort - we all know where that leads! Let sleeping dogs lie; if it ain't broke, etc. No explanations is like marking a kid's work wrong, but never explaining why it's so. No-one learns anything. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 6:31 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | I think this would be a big benefit for really small sites in different ways than big ones, @Joachim , but you're right that A&C is likely a bit smaller than we would want for this phase of the project. Thanks for the invitation, though! I'll keep y'all in mind. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 6:29 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Joachim Since the current plan for this explanation UX is for the test period only, keeping it internal doesn't require moderation tooling integration and there's reason to expect these comments might not be particularly polite. Requiring explanations for downvotes has been one of the most common requests on MSE and MSO and is near-universally unpopular with core meta community members - to some extent I want to avoid that very much. I think we would be willing to share the picked-over responses and stats somewhere, but not on the downvoted post itself. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 6:06 | comment | added | Joachim | You can ask the Arts & Crafts community. As you, Catija, know, we're a small community that would benefit from more participation, but I'm not sure if we're of a size that is considered 'helpful' in this context. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 5:40 | comment | added | Joachim | Why not have the required explanation for downvotes be visible? That way, the community can already learn from this experiment as it is happening, and it will teach new users that their actions have consequences that are seen and felt by everyone. This will allow for more direct guidance. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 2:25 | answer | added | muru | timeline score: 24 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 0:42 | answer | added | starballMod | timeline score: 17 | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 0:05 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @starball additionally, we're looking for sites to volunteer with willing moderators to work with us. If the SO community really wanted to participate and the bulk of the mods were on board, that might outweigh my concerns... but... how likely is that? I'd guess not very. | |
| Sep 20, 2023 at 0:02 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @starball I'm the CM liaison for the team working on this project, my primary function is advisory and support. That said, my voice has been heard along with the concerns of moderators over the last few months so while I don't make decisions, I trust that I have some sway. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 23:48 | comment | added | starball Mod | @Catija "I really don't want to burden the SO mods further while the tools are still being developed" is that just a personal position with no bearings on the company's decision making? Or does that hold that kind of weight? | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 23:10 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | Hey @MarkSchultheiss Could you explain in more detail what you're trying to say with your statements? The first one definitely relates here but it's unclear whether you think that's good or bad. The second sentence seems more related to whether or not a user can delete a question than who can vote but if I'm misunderstanding, please let me know. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 22:35 | comment | added | Mark Schultheiss | Some people don't downvote to avoid the point penalty for downvoting. The new users often remove questions that get a couple of downvotes wasting whatever time anyone has placed on them | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 22:05 | answer | added | Laurel | timeline score: 13 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 21:33 | answer | added | GSerg | timeline score: 66 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 21:02 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @A.R. The comparisons you mention we should do are in the list of data we're going to gather because we understand this concern. I've gotten a lot of mentions of exactly that concern and I seriously have to ask - does having 15 or 125 reputation actually mean you know how to vote? I feel like there's a fallacy in arguments like this because of an assumption that privileged users vote "correctly" and that unprivileged users can't (excluding overt vote misuse). I think we should instead consider that "correct" voting isn't as uniform as we expect and address that for all users. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 20:59 | answer | added | CDR | timeline score: 97 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 20:53 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @KevinB I have looked at that with a tool we have that's more exact than the 10k tools and, even on SO, the numbers weren't particularly concerning to me - from memory - something around 20% additional votes with up/down vote ratios similar to voters with permissions but I avoid leaning on it too hard for the reasons you state and also because those votes aren't unique by user - the same person can click the vote button on the same post multiple times or up- and downvote the post, so those votes aren't 1-to-1 with actual votes. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 20:23 | comment | added | user400654 | It would be interesting to see the data for, say, a specific week, comparing the voting of registered user "feedback" votes vs registered user actual votes, keeping in mind that actual votes are somewhat skewed toward upvoting given the different thresholds and cost of downvoting answers. It can't be compared 1:1, because users who get hit with "you can't do that" likely don't do it again, but maybe people seeing where those votes land in the current voting environment may alleviate some fears. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 20:23 | answer | added | D.W. | timeline score: 24 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 20:17 | comment | added | OpenAI was the last straw | I'm concerned that new users may not be able to recognize a good answer from a bad one and might upvote convenient answers over correct answers. I'm all for engagement, but I hope that SE will take steps to check if "average voter behavior" is significantly affected by this change, which would be a significant red flag wrt the quality of the new votes. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 20:01 | answer | added | Random Person | timeline score: 13 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 19:08 | answer | added | VE7JRO | timeline score: 9 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 19:07 | answer | added | Mark Setchell | timeline score: -6 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:33 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Zoe I understand your worries. A major point of this test is to better understand what tools are needed. This is why I would deter us from testing on SO - while we need bigger sites, most sites have a fraction of the flag queues and suspicious votes list we see on SO. I really don't want to burden the SO mods further while the tools are still being developed. But I do believe that on most other sites, we'd be able to monitor votes throughout the test without creating a burden for those sites' mods. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:27 | answer | added | Random Person | timeline score: 36 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:24 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @QHarr I'd argue that equating voting to the complexity involved in creating and improving posts isn't quite right. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that voting is simple, by comparison to asking a question, it's a breeze. I think that it'd be far easier to educate users to vote properly and let them than it would ever be to educate them in how to create content or edit so they can come up with an idea for a question or answer or submit a bunch of edit suggestions just to earn reputation and then be allowed to vote. To me, that makes little sense. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:19 | answer | added | Rand al'Thor | timeline score: 306 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:18 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @cocomac Yes, we've read that. I've even commented on it when I cleaned up the comments. While many of the answers there are valid here, many of them apply to the breadth of privilege changes rather than only the ones related to voting, which is what this project focuses on. We have no plans to change any other privileges as part of this change. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:11 | answer | added | Tetsujin | timeline score: 14 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:08 | comment | added | cocomac | Have you (or other SE staff involved with this) read the feedback here? | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 18:01 | answer | added | Makoto | timeline score: 101 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:53 | answer | added | Buffy | timeline score: 73 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:45 | answer | added | user152859 | timeline score: 260 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:36 | comment | added | user400654 | I generally expect that upvoting things that are useful, and downvoting things that aren't is a fairly common thing across the web... not something unique to SO that users who previously couldn't vote at all won't be able to grasp. I welcome this change and hope the issues it may cause can be addressed. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:10 | comment | added | QHarr | Many low-rep users don't understand how SO works, don't understand how to ask a good question, and, a lesser proportion, don't accept and/or acknowledge an answer / respond to requests for clarification. How much confidence do you have re: voting for helpful answers. Yeah, I'm a little jaded on this. I also echo the sentiments re increased abuse and moderator effort. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:05 | comment | added | Zoe - Save the data dump | Remember, even a 1% increase on small sites might just be a couple cases, but on SO, it's hundreds, if not thousands (partly depending on how you count it) of cases per week, most of which will have to be manually handled when the brand new sock rings that can be established with no cost and with a disgusting number of users casting few enough votes to remain undetected start firing up | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:04 | answer | added | user400654 | timeline score: 42 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 17:00 | comment | added | Zoe - Save the data dump | You're still massively underestimating the tooling requirements, particularly for SO. Your plan still doesn't include massively extended and improved automated tools. The current automatic vote invalidation system is a potato, and the abuse vectors for evading detection are well-known. You're dumping a massive increase in workload on us, and not doing close to enough to reduce, automate, and improve the workflow for dealing with vote fraud (but especially reduce and automate) | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 16:52 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | @Zoe I understand that you and others have concerns - we've specifically made huge changes to this project plan to address those concerns and have clearly stated that we have additional changes in design and have planned to make further changes but need some data to know what changes are needed. This post doesn't invalidate those concerns - it actually recognizes them and validates them. | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 16:51 | answer | added | cocomac | timeline score: 146 | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 16:44 | comment | added | Zoe - Save the data dump | "We really appreciate the feedback they shared with us because we want to investigate this change in a way that works to avoid negative impacts to the sites." - our feedback saying the tooling isn't ready for the increase in abuse this will lead to apparently didn't make the cut | |
| Sep 19, 2023 at 16:27 | history | asked | CatijaStaffMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |