This is annoyingly paternalistic:
Occasionally, you may see "Reputation: 12 (no significant downvotes)?"; this indicates that either there were no downvotes or there was an insignificant number of them. You are not shown how many because focusing on the occasional downvote (per node) is usually a mistake. A node having a small number of downvotes usually has more to do with the person(s) doing the voting than with the node. Such downvotes could simply be the result of a mistake, someone having a bad day, someone's pet peeve, etc.
You used to be able to see the exact vote totals; now you can't.
If I want to know that a few people downvote all my nodes, or that one person dislikes a response I gave (e.g. because the OP found it unhelpful), I should be able to do so. I would prefer that one could see who voted which way on a node, since that would encourage careful voting, but that will never happen here. Still, can we please at least go back to the way it was before?
Re: Make it possible to see vote totals again
by ww (Archbishop) on Dec 27, 2011 at 12:34 UTC
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No downvote on the OP, but I'm inclined to the opposite point of view.
Considering the quality of questions, discourse, and attention to the site's documents on its standards, I can imagine that reverting to full disclosue of vote counts would merely inspire a plethora of whining in the CB and 'plaints in the threads... neither of which is particularly constructive or useful.
And tye has made it fairly clear, in response to one such complaint, that he (and other godes?) do watch for systematic downvoting of the kind you mention. | [reply] |
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I can only agree. Here's my rule of thumb:
If your posts are good enough, you will have a positive score on them. If your posts are - let's call them "suboptimal" - then you probably deserve a negative score.
Even if one or two persons regularly downvote you unfairly, you'll still get your XP. If you really get systematically downvoted, you should call the gods for help (and/or rethink your attitude).
All in all, i prefer to cast my votes anonymous (e.g. only known to the gods, the vote fairy and the reaper).
BREW /very/strong/coffee HTTP/1.1
Host: goodmorning.example.com
418 I'm a teapot
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Re: Make it possible to see vote totals again
by Old_Gray_Bear (Bishop) on Dec 27, 2011 at 17:44 UTC
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First -- I a think that showing the aggregate rather than the +/- detail is a good thing. If you are writing good notes, then the occasional (usually accidental) down vote is not a problem.
But, I do have an issue with the aggregate system: Occasionally I will up vote a new node and the score that gets displayed is zero. That means that before my +1 the score was -1. I do not consider 50% of the votes an "insignificant number".
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I Go Back to Sleep, Now.
OGB
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Re: Make it possible to see vote totals again
by Argel (Prior) on Dec 27, 2011 at 21:09 UTC
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You can probably partially blame this one on me. I had someone downvote a post and could not figure out why, so asked. The discussion (if it can be called that) was not very productive, and I think the reason was I posted a followup several days later. The point of this rule is that you should not be worried about one or two down votes because there is a good chance there is nothing significant about them. Keep in mind that noderep is about the overall quality of the node, so getting too hung up on one vote like I did is missing the point. The current implementation is a great reminder of that and I'm fine with it.
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Re: Make it possible to see vote totals again
by jdporter (Paladin) on Dec 27, 2011 at 18:34 UTC
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I mean that the new display treats users like children by assuming that they
are better off not having certain information because they "can't handle the
truth."
To some extent, I suppose. But it was more that we treat users like children
because a bunch of us were quite tired of the many years of endless whining
like little children that users were doing over and over again (but that
still misses much of the picture). But I suspect that proof of childishness
won't ease your annoyance with perceived paternalism. After all, surely
you aren't a child. I don't actually personally think you are a
child. But your node actually demonstrates how you are likely a very good
example of somebody who should not be obsessing about details about these
very small numbers of downvotes on many of your nodes.
But, before we get into that, let us dispense with the most important point:
You used to be able to see the exact vote totals; now you can't.
Utter bullocks. In point of fact, the public call to avoid showing
"insignificant" downvotes predates the implementation of the ability to see
anything but the singular sum by years. The only site change that was
made was to show more information (and that change was made years
ago).
So, now that your primary thesis has been declared in error, are we done? I
guess not.
This is annoyingly paternalistic
The frequent whining was more annoying, IMO. If you can get everybody to
always act like mature adults (which means no whining, IMO), then we can
start treating everybody like mature adults in more ways. Or, if you can
devise a clever CAPTCHA to distinguishing those "who can handle the (useless
and misleading) 'truth'" (adults like you) from those who will whine about
it...
In the mean time, one of the things I'm most happy with in regard to site
changes is that it feels to me like there is much less whining about downvoting
in the last couple of years (most of the mentions of downvoting in the past 2+
years have been actually due to complaining about trolling and spam, not
whining resulting from tiny numbers of downvotes). And I think some
of that is the result of a quite a few mostly quite minor changes that I have
helped to make that I guessed could reduce how much the site encourages such
whining. I'm actually a bit shocked at how well it (and other things) seems
to have worked on that front.
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Oh. Maybe.
paternalistic: benevolent but sometimes intrusive
patronizing: treating others with condescension
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