Post History

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.