I like seeing the negative number on my posts. But I have also noticed a voting trend that seems to be much more forgiving than the posts of old.
The first wave of readers seem to vote up; the second wave votes down; over time it stabilizes somewhere near where the first wave peaked. This doesn’t seem to happen on posts that are really superb.
I think showing the full number of up and down votes would be helpful to authors and also let people know why a post is at the number it is. Seeing +5 −7 is different than seeing −2.
That being said, karma inflation seems to be hitting. I am rarely getting downvoted on comments anymore. I don’t think I have improved that much as a commentator. I am not convinced that the effects you are seeing are only happening to Posts.
Is this a behavior we want? If not, what can we do about it?
I think a great way to handle the Post karma is to hide the actual number for a week. Let it show + or—for positive or negative but no numbers. By the time one week has passed most people will have moved on.
Another solution may be to keep actual voting history available and let people see votes by people who said their history is public. As far as I can tell, that preference doesn’t do anything yet.
ETA: Another solution would be to set karma rewards to only happen after a certain threshold. Between 0 and +5 you don’t get any karma. After that, you get 10 karma per point. Everything under 0 still penalizes you 10 karma per point.
Or the above but only getting rewards after a certain percentage votes up. +5 −1 nets 40 karma, +20 −16 nets nothing, but each have a score of +4.
Voting history publication does do something—click on a user’s name, and then click “liked” or “disliked”, and you can see what top-level posts they have voted up or down. It just doesn’t work backwards, and doesn’t work for comments.
I like seeing the negative number on my posts. But I have also noticed a voting trend that seems to be much more forgiving than the posts of old.
The first wave of readers seem to vote up; the second wave votes down; over time it stabilizes somewhere near where the first wave peaked. This doesn’t seem to happen on posts that are really superb.
I think showing the full number of up and down votes would be helpful to authors and also let people know why a post is at the number it is. Seeing +5 −7 is different than seeing −2.
That being said, karma inflation seems to be hitting. I am rarely getting downvoted on comments anymore. I don’t think I have improved that much as a commentator. I am not convinced that the effects you are seeing are only happening to Posts.
I think a great way to handle the Post karma is to hide the actual number for a week. Let it show + or—for positive or negative but no numbers. By the time one week has passed most people will have moved on.
Another solution may be to keep actual voting history available and let people see votes by people who said their history is public. As far as I can tell, that preference doesn’t do anything yet.
ETA: Another solution would be to set karma rewards to only happen after a certain threshold. Between 0 and +5 you don’t get any karma. After that, you get 10 karma per point. Everything under 0 still penalizes you 10 karma per point.
Or the above but only getting rewards after a certain percentage votes up. +5 −1 nets 40 karma, +20 −16 nets nothing, but each have a score of +4.
Voting history publication does do something—click on a user’s name, and then click “liked” or “disliked”, and you can see what top-level posts they have voted up or down. It just doesn’t work backwards, and doesn’t work for comments.
Ho ho! It does do something! Man, all these hidden features… thanks for the tip.