Hmm. This is an interesting point, which I think I agree with (having recently been testing out this feature and getting to see some of my comments get downvoted, and having a bit of the reaction you described).
I _also_ agree with Wei_Dai’s point, which is that right now we’re incentivizing people to learn the system but in a delayed, confusing way. Doing something to help people learn what the system means may be good.
Unreal’s suggestion of “just once, publish a list of posts and comments with their associated vote-types, so you can get a feel for what it means” is also plausible, although I note that this doesn’t really make it discoverable for new users.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
So possible ideas:
1. Listing _total_ votes is helpful for at least inferring roughly what a post’s overall engagement is, which I think is valuable user feedback, and might get you 60%-80& of the way there. I notice that I feel way less “raised hackles” if I see my karma go down than if I see an explicit “you have been downvoted” remark.
2. Crazy idea: list total number of votes, and then list _strong upvotes_ and _strong downvotes_, based on the theory that… social management of the micro is bad and that it’s fine to roll regular upvotes/downvotes in a vague “total karma / vote count”, but that strong upvotes/downvotes should communicate something more.
3. Crazier idea: what’s most important to me, I think, is knowing if _people I respect_ have downvoted a thing. Theoretically, ideally, karma correlates with respect. In practice, some people have domain expertise and/or worldviews that lead me to weight their opinion on a post more highly. This gets into all sorts of complications and we wouldn’t get around to for months even if we thought it was a good idea, but you might have a thing where people can opt into seeing each other’s votes (if they are something like “mutual friends”)
Hmm. This is an interesting point, which I think I agree with (having recently been testing out this feature and getting to see some of my comments get downvoted, and having a bit of the reaction you described).
I _also_ agree with Wei_Dai’s point, which is that right now we’re incentivizing people to learn the system but in a delayed, confusing way. Doing something to help people learn what the system means may be good.
Unreal’s suggestion of “just once, publish a list of posts and comments with their associated vote-types, so you can get a feel for what it means” is also plausible, although I note that this doesn’t really make it discoverable for new users.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
So possible ideas:
1. Listing _total_ votes is helpful for at least inferring roughly what a post’s overall engagement is, which I think is valuable user feedback, and might get you 60%-80& of the way there. I notice that I feel way less “raised hackles” if I see my karma go down than if I see an explicit “you have been downvoted” remark.
2. Crazy idea: list total number of votes, and then list _strong upvotes_ and _strong downvotes_, based on the theory that… social management of the micro is bad and that it’s fine to roll regular upvotes/downvotes in a vague “total karma / vote count”, but that strong upvotes/downvotes should communicate something more.
3. Crazier idea: what’s most important to me, I think, is knowing if _people I respect_ have downvoted a thing. Theoretically, ideally, karma correlates with respect. In practice, some people have domain expertise and/or worldviews that lead me to weight their opinion on a post more highly. This gets into all sorts of complications and we wouldn’t get around to for months even if we thought it was a good idea, but you might have a thing where people can opt into seeing each other’s votes (if they are something like “mutual friends”)