Here's something I'd be interested to see explored as an alternative: Giving anonymous votes some public visibility.

Interface options:

• Make it a setting to switch between the two, or put it in a tooltip when hovering the vote count, or put it side-by-side (probably visually clunky and confusing), etc. I don't care too too much how it's executed right now.
• Allow sorting by votes with anonymous votes taken into account. You could even get fancy and let the user give anonymous votes a custom weight / multiplier for sorting.
• Or don't show the actual value of the vote count with anonymous votes counted, but at least still allow sorting with them taken into account.

Why: I can see the value of making votes only count for rep once you earn it as a privilege (to gatekeep bad actors), but personally, the only obvious reason I see not to let anonymous votes to be optionally visible to the public is that it would enable people to game their post to the top of that sorting option by sending requests from multiple IPs (Catija semi-confirmed that anonymous votes are per-IP-address (for two anonymous votes from the same IP, only one is counted)). But while that's not perfectly solvable, it's a mitigatable problem.

Mitigating "anonymous voting fraud": Ex. only take up to X (Ex. 1) votes (somehow pick them if more than X were cast) from one IP per given time period (Ex. a day or week), and in that time period, the median of the taken anonymous votes on a given post is taken as the one and only anonymous vote cast in that time period for the purposes of displaying anonymous votes. It's hecking complicated, but I think it would do a pretty good job at making gaming votes / "anonymous voting fraud" unattractive, while still making anonymous votes have a degree of meaningful visibility to the general public.

I'd also like for votes one cast with an account that doesn't yet have that voting privilege to be at least visible to the user. Ideally I think those votes would take "real effect" automatically once they gain the privilege to vote in that direction, but I can understand why that could be difficult / complicated with the daily vote limit and sudden load with handling any serial voting, so I can understand if that's not a good option. At least if a user can see the votes they cast even before they gained a voting direction privilege, they can go back and slowly cast "real" votes on them retrospectively.

Here's something I'd be interested to see explored as an alternative: Giving anonymous votes some kind / degree of public visibility (while still being anonymous, of course).

Interface options:

• Make it a setting to switch between the two, or put it in a tooltip when hovering the vote count, or put it side-by-side (probably visually clunky and confusing), etc. I don't care too too much how it's executed right now.
• Allow sorting by votes with anonymous votes taken into account. You could even get fancy and let the user give anonymous votes a custom weight / multiplier for sorting- Ex. 0.5 the weight of a "real" vote.
• Or don't show the actual value of the vote count with anonymous votes counted, but at least still allow sorting with them taken into account.

Why: I can see the value of making votes only count for rep once you earn it as a privilege (to gatekeep bad actors), but personally, the only obvious reason I see not to let anonymous votes to be optionally visible to the public is that it would enable people to game their post to the top of that sorting option by sending requests from multiple IPs (Catija semi-confirmed that anonymous votes are per-IP-address (for two anonymous votes from the same IP, only one is counted)). But while that's not perfectly solvable, it's a mitigatable problem.

Mitigating "anonymous voting fraud": Ex. only take up to X (Ex. 1) votes (somehow pick them if more than X were cast) from one IP per given time period (Ex. a day or week), and in that time period, the median of the taken anonymous votes on a given post is taken as the one and only anonymous vote cast in that time period for the purposes of displaying anonymous votes. It's hecking complicated, but I think it would do a pretty good job at making gaming votes / "anonymous voting fraud" unattractive, while still making anonymous votes have a degree of meaningful visibility to the general public.

I'd also like for votes one cast with an account that doesn't yet have that voting privilege to be at least visible to the user. Ideally I think those votes would take "real effect" automatically once they gain the privilege to vote in that direction, but I can understand why that could be difficult / complicated with the daily vote limit and sudden load with handling any serial voting, so I can understand if that's not a good option. At least if a user can see the votes they cast even before they gained a voting direction privilege, they can go back and slowly cast "real" votes on them retrospectively.

Related: Once I reach 15 reputation, will my old votes be taken into account?

Here's something I'd be interested to see explored as an alternative: Making anonymous votes visible.

Interface options:

• Make it a setting to switch between the two, or put it in a tooltip when hovering the vote count, or put it side-by-side (probably visually clunky and confusing), etc. I don't care too too much how it's executed right now.
• Allow sorting by votes with anonymous votes taken into account. You could even get fancy and let the user give anonymous votes a custom weight / multiplier for sorting.
• Or don't show the actual value of the vote count with anonymous votes counted, but at least still allow sorting with them taken into account.

Why: I can see the value of making votes only count for rep once you earn it as a privilege (to gatekeep bad actors), but personally, the only obvious reason I see not to let anonymous votes to be optionally visible to the public is that it would enable people to game their post to the top of that sorting option by sending requests from multiple IPs (Catija semi-confirmed that anonymous votes are per-IP-address (for two anonymous votes from the same IP, only one is counted)). But while that's not perfectly solvable, it's a mitigatable problem.

Mitigating "anonymous voting fraud": Ex. only take up to X (Ex. 1) votes (somehow pick them if more than X were cast) from one IP per given time period (Ex. a day or week), and in that time period, the median of the taken anonymous votes on a given post is taken as the one and only anonymous vote cast in that time period for the purposes of displaying anonymous votes. It's hecking complicated, but I think it would do a pretty good job at making gaming votes / "anonymous voting fraud" unattractive, while still making anonymous votes have a degree of meaningful visibility to the general public.

Here's something I'd be interested to see explored as an alternative: Giving anonymous votes some public visibility.

Interface options:

• Make it a setting to switch between the two, or put it in a tooltip when hovering the vote count, or put it side-by-side (probably visually clunky and confusing), etc. I don't care too too much how it's executed right now.
• Allow sorting by votes with anonymous votes taken into account. You could even get fancy and let the user give anonymous votes a custom weight / multiplier for sorting.
• Or don't show the actual value of the vote count with anonymous votes counted, but at least still allow sorting with them taken into account.

Why: I can see the value of making votes only count for rep once you earn it as a privilege (to gatekeep bad actors), but personally, the only obvious reason I see not to let anonymous votes to be optionally visible to the public is that it would enable people to game their post to the top of that sorting option by sending requests from multiple IPs (Catija semi-confirmed that anonymous votes are per-IP-address (for two anonymous votes from the same IP, only one is counted)). But while that's not perfectly solvable, it's a mitigatable problem.

Mitigating "anonymous voting fraud": Ex. only take up to X (Ex. 1) votes (somehow pick them if more than X were cast) from one IP per given time period (Ex. a day or week), and in that time period, the median of the taken anonymous votes on a given post is taken as the one and only anonymous vote cast in that time period for the purposes of displaying anonymous votes. It's hecking complicated, but I think it would do a pretty good job at making gaming votes / "anonymous voting fraud" unattractive, while still making anonymous votes have a degree of meaningful visibility to the general public.

I'd also like for votes one cast with an account that doesn't yet have that voting privilege to be at least visible to the user. Ideally I think those votes would take "real effect" automatically once they gain the privilege to vote in that direction, but I can understand why that could be difficult / complicated with the daily vote limit and sudden load with handling any serial voting, so I can understand if that's not a good option. At least if a user can see the votes they cast even before they gained a voting direction privilege, they can go back and slowly cast "real" votes on them retrospectively.