In addition to what Lundin said, we should do something Monica alluded to in her posts to each community.

Some communities, particularly the less-active ones, have a high drivel ratio. This makes the place look like an unkempt trash heap to casual visitors. I suggest that unregistered users only be shown posts with positive vote count. I've looked at communities with particularly high drivel problems (Outdoors, Scientific Speculation), and that pretty much weeds out the duds.

Alternatively, or maybe in addition, the list of posts can be displayed differently for everyone. Right now, all posts are displayed with the same prominence. The only way to tell gems from junk is by looking at the score. The information is there, but it's mixed in with the clutter visually.

Instead, post should be displayed differently according to three classifications: New, Positive, and Poor.

New posts are those that have been posted recently, like a day or a few days, and have received less than N total votes. The exact time limit and number of votes should be settable per site. New posts would be shown in the list with a light green background so that they stand out. These are the posts that should get the most attention from existing users. They need to be answered and rated.

Positive posts are those with a net-positive (+1 or more) vote count. These would be shown as they are now.

Poor posts have a 0 or negative vote count. They would be shown somewhat grayed-out and with less detail, and take up less space vertically. The point is to visually de-emphasize them.

This does some useful things:

1. Active users can quickly see where attention is needed.
2. Askers will see their new questions be highlighted for a time.
3. There are real a consequences to asking poorly. Your question will be less visible, and then you're less likely to get an answer. You can no longer just ignore all the downvotes and keep doing the same thing. You now have to actually impress someone for your post to live and produce the desired result.
4. The perceived quality is higher with poor posts de-emphasized. Not only does that make them feel like a smaller fraction of the site, but it also shows that the site understands they are poor posts and has dealt with them accordingly. Put another way, you don't see as much dirt, and you can see that we know the difference and try to keep the place clean.

None of this should apply to meta, since voting there is (or should be) about agreement or disagreement, not necessarily a judgement of post quality. Free discussion of ideas should be encouraged on meta, without the fear of being penalized for having an unpopular viewpoint. Maybe unregistered users shouldn't see meta at all?

I wouldn't want to see posts classified as "poor," at least not by the criteria suggested. To be "poor," a post would need only a single downvote, or a lack of upvotes for long enough to leave the "new" category. That happens often here. People seeing their sincere, well-written, but ignored posts labelled "poor" aren't likely to come back. If we're going to have that category, the criteria for being placed in it have to be stronger, perhaps at least a score of -2.

The labels I used above were only to aid in describing the mechanics. Names of the classifications would not be shown to users. All they see is posts either highlighted, displayed as now, or de-emphasized.

As for the threshold for poor, I've looked around in a number of the sites. The dividing line between good and everything else seems to be that good stuff gets at least one upvote. Ignored questions with 0/0 votes are generally not very good, and are not what we want casual visitors to see as part of their first impressions.

posted about 3 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

3y ago

Olin Lathrop‭

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