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    Hopefully, the results of this experiment conducted on 2-3 guinea pig sites will bear out what you predict (I agree) and they won't then take it further to the whole network. Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 17:48
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    These are exactly the sorts of things we'll be checking for. The former will already be removed by our system automatically and the latter is something we already see - we get occasional reports from mods about users who are dumping votes on sites in pursuit of badges. While we expect these will be more common, that doesn't mean they're not already happening. Seeing how common they are during these tests will help us prioritize either improving or supplementing automations or adding additional tools. Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 22:46
  • 8
    As a CM, I see these situations happening already and would love to have better ways to handle them or be able to avoid manually handling them at all. It's valid to draw our attention to these outcomes but I also think we need to address these concerns in a measured way. Preventing all low-rep users from voting because some will misuse those votes doesn't seem reasonable to me and earning reputation doesn't equate to knowing how to use votes. I'd rather address actual misuse. It's certainly easier to use rep but that doesn't make it the right solution. Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 22:54
  • 15
    I'm willing to accept that we're underestimating the negative impact of this change and that's why we'll be monitoring this and looking for abuse that's both overt and subtle. By the same token, I think many people overestimate the negative impact of this - which I don't begrudge! Either way, making decisions based on assumptions and mental images of users - whether angelic or devilish - risks us making mistakes. That's why we want to see what actually happens. Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 23:00
  • @Catija You have tools that can detect if one user is regularly downvoting another user, correct? And such votes are automatically undone. But is there any sort of punishment for the user that does this? Commented Sep 20, 2023 at 5:55
  • 6
    @trlkly We have a variety of tools for detecting targeted votes. Some remove the votes automatically while others are added to a tool mods can investigate more closely or contact the CM team to request a deeper investigation and possible vote invalidation. This may lead to a mod message or suspension for the voer. For automatic invalidations, we don't notify mods or the voter when these occur. I think notifying mods in cases of extreme or repeated invalidations would be a nice improvement, and would let them look for other voting issues and contact or suspend the user if deemed appropriate. Commented Sep 20, 2023 at 6:42
  • 4
    This is exactly the point of the experiment: to find out if that's true. Commented Sep 20, 2023 at 10:38
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    IMHO the biggest problem of SO is that bad answers are not downvoted enough, so that would be actually good. Commented Sep 20, 2023 at 12:52
  • 1
    "If more users could vote, would they engage more?" ─ Even this is not so simple. The engagement SE wants (i.e. people posting good content) is what would earn people the reputation they need to be able to vote. So that engagement is currently incentivised by rewarding people who do it with voting privileges. Then why should we expect engagement to go up when one of the incentives is removed? Commented Sep 21, 2023 at 22:18
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    @kaya3 The voters are not necessarily the only people this change will cause to engage more. If someone spends time on a good answer and earns no upvotes, they may decide it's not worth it to take the time any more. Now we have fewer people creating good content. By having more people with the ability to vote, a higher percentage of consumers on the site will be able to indicate whether the posts are good which may lead fewer people to get frustrated that their efforts are unrecognized. Commented Sep 21, 2023 at 23:13
  • I think that users being allowed to vote is a good idea. Commented Sep 22, 2023 at 13:42
  • @Agent_L "Bad answers" is subjective though. What about the polarizing answers that some users find helpful and others find unhelpful? Should we discourage the contributors of those answers? Sometimes people post good content but receive all kinds of flak for it not being in the format that SE is accustomed to, and reasons of that nature. Commented Sep 25, 2023 at 9:08
  • @Mentalist Yes, that's precisely what the up/down system is meant to show. Remember that SO is not for people who ask questions, nor for those who answer them. Majority of traffic is passive readers, so the prime objective should be to provide them with unbiased review of presented answers. High number of both up and downvotes is a conveying "this is controversial" message. We're not after any content, we're after helpful content. Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 8:28
  • @Randal'Thor It seems a bit wrong to hope for the negative case to be true. Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 12:35
  • 5
    I read somewhere the other day that SO traffic has declined 50% in recent years. This may be due to the constant push to dumb down the site and allow trash content to be generated. This is a site for programmers -- it should not be dumbed down. If you dumb it down, you let non-programmers mess it up for everyone else. For me, this is a professional resource and over the past few years it has become less and less relevant, correct, and useful. I would pay, real money, hundreds per year, for something like SO but without all the crap like this 'test'. Commented Sep 26, 2023 at 12:44