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General discussion on making votes public
Make vote secrecy a per-community choice, because some communities might prefer voting transparency over voting privacy.
Side-question. Why voting is secret in other Q&A platforms?
Origins in the Community Server (direct link to conversation), raw transcript follows (but expect format inconsistencies):
Transcript
Mithical
Votes are anonymous. Scrounging vote stats on profile pages to see who's cast votes on a small site to try to figure out who's downvoted something is highly discouraged, and calling people out for it is definitely over the line.DonielF
Why are vote stats displayed on profiles?Mithical
gs
let's read the git log about it
I traced it back to the earliest user profile pages written back 5 years ago
I couldn't identify a reason, I'd guess "just because it was easily and readily available" the first living version already had that https://github.com/codidact/qpixel/commit/90a8cb1683cc90ad8bd928742c3a32d5ee761d64cellio
When Art wrote QPixel originally he was probably thinking more along the lines of an SE clone as opposed to a new thing. Originally Codidact was going to start fresh with all new code, building from the start what we wanted to have, but that turned out to have issues. So we decided to start with QPixel and evolve it into what we want. This is one of those underlying assumptions, inherited from SE, that I'm guessing no one thought about. I think it makes sense to show voting history only to the user, not publicly.gs
what if we went all the way around. Instead of making everything vote-secret, make everything vote-public
excuse me I ignore if there's already a meta post about itDonielF
what if we went all the way around. Instead of making everything vote-secret, make everything vote-public
@gs NONONONONONONO
gs
why not? I meanDonielF
Already with reactions and “me too”‘s we’ve had people say they’re only interested in voting and the like only because of anonymity involved; they don’t want it to be personal.gs
if voting is even moar secret than in SE, there'll always be people thinking staff cheats scoresDonielF
As if scores do anything?
Also, everything is open source
There’s no way for staff to cheat votesShowMeBillyJo
Well, direct database manipulation - the data isn't open sourcegs
Already with reactions and “me too”‘s we’ve had people say they’re only interested in voting and the like only because of anonymity involved; they don’t want it to be personal.
aha so r you basically saying it's a community choice?
and I mean a per community choiceShowMeBillyJo
I think it'd be an interesting thought exercise to explore fully open votes, even if it doesn't get implementedDonielF
aha so r you basically saying it’s a community choice?
@gs I’m not necessarily saying that, but I’d be comfortable with such a policy.
Look, if y’all really think this is something that should be explored, Meta awaitsgs
I'm lazy to write the post but give me a link I can upvoteMithical
There are also some ancient forum discussions about this.[...]
Mithical
There are also some ancient forum discussions about this
https://forum.codidact.org/t/proposal-votes-scores-and-answer-order/385/19
Relevant forum discussion: https://forum.codidact.org/t/proposal-votes-scores-and-answer-order/385/19
Let's weigh the pros and cons. Pros - Discourages downvoting without reason As stated in Olin's answer, people wi …
4y ago
I know this is not a popular stance, but I agree with you. I have seen first hand the problems caused by anonymous vo …
4y ago
Countering some Moshi's claims. > False accusations of revenge voting. (whether knowingly or not) That is, stuff like …
4y ago
Just get rid of downvoting on answers (not questions) and be done with all this squabbling. If an answer is bad, then a …
3y ago
4 answers
You are accessing this answer with a direct link, so it's being shown above all other answers regardless of its score. You can return to the normal view.
Countering some Moshi's claims.
False accusations of revenge voting. (whether knowingly or not) That is, stuff like "I know @downvoter doesn't like me, that must be why they downvoted." and "I downvoted @downvoter's post a few days ago, they must be downvoting me because of that"
When downvotes are public, make required posting a reason for downvote. Then once you have the feature, allow commented downvotes on sites where downvotes are private.
Actual revenge voting. I really fail to see how letting people know who downvoted them is supposed to discourage downvoting in revenge. At least with private votes, they won't know who to target.
Knowing who hates others is a good first step towards their reconciliation.
Discourages downvoting. Most people already don't like giving negative feedback; signing downvotes will only make it harder.
You justify a site design choice on the timidity needs of a minority group. Instead, let that minority downvote privately, but why force their needs on other people?
It still doesn't do anything about downvoting without explanation. The main issue with downvotes is that they aren't very constructive. They say "this post isn't good" without explaining why the post isn't good. Showing who downvoted doesn't do anything about this issue, and in fact people might rely on their name instead of an explanation a la "Let my reputation tell people this post is bad instead of explaining why it's bad."
I see it as a way to facilitate communication...
"Heaviness" of certain users' votes. Expanding on the previous point, if the well-known user A downvotes a post, then the community might be biased to downvote because "A thinks it's bad so it probably is."1 The same goes with upvotes; users might be biased to upvote if user A upvotes.
Sites metas can easily fight this by insisting on not falling in authority fallacy.
Let's weigh the pros and cons.
Pros
- Discourages downvoting without reason As stated in Olin's answer, people will be less likely to go on a downvoting spree if their name is attached to those downvotes.
- Uh... we can lynch active downvoters?
Cons
- False accusations of revenge voting. (whether knowingly or not) That is, stuff like "I know @downvoter doesn't like me, that must be why they downvoted." and "I downvoted @downvoter's post a few days ago, they must be downvoting me because of that"
- Actual revenge voting. I really fail to see how letting people know who downvoted them is supposed to discourage downvoting in revenge. At least with private votes, they won't know who to target.
- Discourages downvoting. Most people already don't like giving negative feedback; signing downvotes will only make it harder.
- It still doesn't do anything about downvoting without explanation. The main issue with downvotes is that they aren't very constructive. They say "this post isn't good" without explaining why the post isn't good. Showing who downvoted doesn't do anything about this issue, and in fact people might rely on their name instead of an explanation a la "Let my reputation tell people this post is bad instead of explaining why it's bad."
- "Heaviness" of certain users' votes. Expanding on the previous point, if the well-known user A downvotes a post, then the community might be biased to downvote because "A thinks it's bad so it probably is."1 The same goes with upvotes; users might be biased to upvote if user A upvotes.
I really did try to think of pros, but... I really can't see any benefit to displaying who voted. It just causes needless drama and reduces the objectivity of upvoting and downvoting.
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This is also why I don't like the other idea of having two types of downvotes, it does nothing that a well-reasoned comment doesn't do. ↩
I know this is not a popular stance, but I agree with you.
I have seen first hand the problems caused by anonymous voting on SE, especially anonymous downvotes. Whenever there is a way to do any harm without being identified, vandals will do so, or it will be done for personal reasons and not the intended ones. This is true in the wider world, not just on line.
We have kicked around the idea of having two types of votes, signed and unsigned. The signed votes would carry more weight. Unsigned downvotes would only be displayed in a tally, but would be unable to cause harm to the author (reducing rep or any similar metric) or the post (change the score and sort order).
The main argument I've heard for anonymous votes is that people will feel more free to express their opinion. There is certainly some truth to that, but it is limited. If someone is not willing to stand behind their decision, then the value of that decision is diminished. Put another way, the few votes we might lose wouldn't have had much value anyway.
On the other side, anonymous downvotes invite vandals and retribution voters. I have seen this first hand many times on SE. Some people apparently haven't experienced this at all, but that doesn't make it less real.
Some argue that public downvotes will lead to escalating retribution votes. That is unproven since these same people refuse to even try it. I believe exactly the opposite will happen. People feel free to cast retribution downvotes because they are anonymous. If all votes, or at least all downvotes, were public, retribution voters could be seen, and they would then look stupid or petty.
Just get rid of downvoting on answers (not questions) and be done with all this squabbling. If an answer is bad, then a decent comment below it should warn people off believing the answer has any merit.
1 comment thread