[FEATURE REQUEST] After clicking on a vote score, display +/- votes (like Stack Overflow)

MXXIV·Feb 13, 2015·6 votes·1,222 views

Actually, just the vote score can be deceiving. This post of mine has +59 votes. But in fact, over 85 people voted on it. The Tamat's response is even more strange - it shows -4 votes, but over 70 people voted on it! And they quite evenly divided showing that Tamat's response actually satisfies about 50% of users.

http://i.stack.imgur.com/7ZW9A.png

This score is good to indicate controversial topics. If something has +100/-0 votes, you are very likely to agree with it too. But if it has +60/-50, that's pretty tie. But all you'll see is +10.

So I propose this new feature - when user clicks the number of votes, it reveals the actual up/down score. Similar thing exists on Stack Exchange network.

4 Comments

CupcakeTrapFeb 13, 20151 votes

I think this would be really interesting.

I wonder if it might also be better to just hide the vote count entirely until people click. Of course, the votes will determine where it's positioned in the list, but I think there's an argument that people should vote without knowing exactly how others have voted. Sort of like hiding poll results until you vote.

MXXIVFeb 13, 20151 votes

I'm pretty sure the people who based on other's votes is not percentualy significant.

CupcakeTrapFeb 13, 20152 votes

{quoted}

I'm pretty sure the people who based on other's votes is not percentualy significant.

I don't know; when I see a comment at 0 or -1, which may reflect only one or two total voters, I find myself automatically assuming it's a bad post, when it might simply have rubbed a few people the wrong way. I try to give each post a fair shot, but I think there's an effect there.

Of course, one could argue about whether it's good or bad for people to use vote counts to gauge the value of a post.

Relatedly, I wonder if it would be an improvement if the algorithm allowed one upvote to not only add a point but also to cancel out one downvote. (Or maybe there's some other ratio.) That might help "controversial" posts compete with kitten-posts, by allowing a +200/-100 post to rival a +100/-10 post.

MXXIVFeb 13, 20151 votes

That's exactly why I'm trying to get the number of votes visible. But as of the sorting algorithm, it seems to me that it does take number of votes in account. Even when I sort by Best, the posts aren't always sorted by score. At least I think it occurred to me. In my example, the Tamat's post is also seen the first, though it has the worst score of all posts in that thread.