Discussion: The merits of removing the ability to vote from the "main" page
So I was thinking the other day -- is there any good reason to allow voting from the main ~'s page? For clarity in this discussion, I'm talking about this view.
Some pro's and con's for removing the vote button from the main page:
Pro:
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Discourages "drive-by" voting. We all (mostly?) know that reddit in particular is notorious for having highly up-voted posts that most users read the headline / top-comment and not the article itself. This is particularly noxious for political posts, as often times a vote on a post is an extension of one's own biases / beliefs, rather than an engagement on the topic at hand. This hasn't reared it's head to the same extent on ~'s yet (this post with 15 votes / and only 1 comment would seem to be the closest I can find), but I think it would be a mistake to think that this sort of behavior wouldn't migrate over from reddit. Other reasons for voting on a post without at least getting into the comments are equally bad e.g.: "Oh, I like that band / song / movie / whatever" -- this is a key driver of recycled content on /r/music or movies or tv etc. This reason alone is enough for me to consider removing front-page voting a net-positive
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The user is forced to enter the comments to vote, wherein they may actually read something that sparks their desire to read the thing / interact with the post. The goal on ~'s is to promote substantive discussion, and I think this would be an interesting tool to try to direct users to said discussion.
Cons
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It's more inconvenient, but hey -- so is putting the comment box at the bottom of the page (and I think that's a good idea on net as well)
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UI inconsistency -- this is a bad thing, but we've got a lot of smart computer people on here. We can probably figure out some way to make this work.
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It doesn't actually force the user to read / listen / interact with the submission, just suggests that they do. But hey, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, eh?
Hanging Questions
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What about voting on ~group pages? My off-the-cuff idea would be that voting on ~music.world.calypso would be a good thing (to promote organic growth of quality posts from small ~groups), but not voting on overarching groups (~music) -- but then the UI issue rears' it's ugly head
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What about comment / submission voting from other places e.g.: user-pages, notifications, inbox replies, etc.
I think this is a really good suggestion. On the flip side, I usually vote on the main page because I often click on the article, read it, hit back and vote without leaving a comment. Because I read a lot more than I comment on, this will be inconvenient for me, but I'm not against this.
People are going to drive by vote whether they have to open the thread or not. I don't think this suggestion is going to accomplish any of your perceived "issues". People recycle content because it's interesting and not everyone has seen that same content before. There's really no way to prevent this.
I vote on just about any content that I comment on or read so long as it's not inflammatory and nothing you can do or say will convince me otherwise. Someone put effort into that post or comment and so long as I got something non-negative out of it, I want to reward that effort.
People are going to write custom CSS to move the comment box up to the top of the thread as well, but the majority of users won't.
The idea isn't to "solve" them, more to guide the average users behaviour. In the same way that proper UI design can affect the user experience, changing the way the system allows you to vote may alter user behavior. It might not either, but I think it's worth the experiment
I have mixed feeling on this. Take this post on /r/music for instance -- which is more likely, that there are 22K people who haven't heard of The Wall before? Or that a large majority of those votes came because Pink Floyd was in the name? The top 10 comments there are all people who are familiar with Pink Floyd (seeming to indicate the latter).
I'm not saying this suggestion would even come close to fixing this problem, nor that a substantial discussion on The Wall is even a bad thing. Reposting in general doesn't bother me for exactly the reasons you mention.
However, it's pretty undeniable on music subs that bands that have high-name recognition will shoot right to the top, regardless of the quality of the post. Similarly, I've definitely noticed a pattern of users up-voting politics / news posts that conform to their beliefs. Hell, I'm even guilty of it at times. This is the issue a change like this might actually have an effect on -- if someone wants to go into a thread and talk Pink-Floyd, then great, but they should be discouraged by the system to just vote a submission up just because Pink Floyd is in the title.
That said, it's a totally open debate to how well / if at all an idea like this would work.
I appreciate this sentiment quite a bit, I almost vote on someones comment or submission if I find it valuable in the slightest. I wonder how this approach differs from the average redditor, say, however.
Quite a bit, given the usual amount of upvotes you see in threads and the downvote hivemind you see from time to time. The exception being the stuff at the top of a comment thread getting a lot of views.
Post upvote/downvote is an entirely different dynamic than comments, though.
I expect this to be the same, even if you have to open up a thread first. It might temper it a bit, but it will temper people who would drive by upvote new/original/good content as well.
I’m guilty of drive-by voting here on Tildes. I hadn’t really considered if this is a good thing for the site in general; my intuition was to vote as an indicator that I’d like to see “more like this” (though admittedly I have done this for several links without having read more than the title). I can see how that’s not necessarily a good thing.
An argument could also be made that, at this early stage, we should not do anything that would decrease the already-low vote count posts are receiving. Just as a matter of human psychology, if posters don’t perceive enough others are liking their content, they may not feel validated enough to want to post again in the future. Even though everything’s made up and the points don’t matter... on some level they do.
I’m undecided. If we did want to lean in a more vote-restricting direction, I wonder if requiring a comment in order to vote would be a good idea.
I have a few questions.
Is drive-by voting something that that you're experiencing here on Tildes in a significant way? I'm not entirely sure that it is, but I'm equally sure I don't have the wherewithal to make that decision.
Is drive-by voting bad? Some subquestions to support this one:
Will your proposal actually address the problem that you are experiencing? And can we nail down exactly what we think that problem is, and is there a different (potentially better or simpler) solution?
I don't know that it is yet -- but given that it absolutely is an issue on reddit, I don't think we should be so naive as to assume it won't migrate. I thought about this after catching myself drive-by voting a story on the family separation issue yesterday.
I would go so far as to say it's almost always bad -- (edit:) at best it's used like /u/psuedolobster suggests, as a bump for content they think is quality based on a quick read, this case seems reasonable to me at the moment (particularly with low user #s), but in the long run wouldn't we want people who are invested in the topic at hand deciding the quality? Addressing your questions (with my own opinions):
1 & 2 are good reasons to vote on a submission.
3 is almost always a bad reason to vote on an article.
4 - maybe? this might be a less clunky way to address the problem, but it has it's flaws (e.g., you read it on another device, another thing ~ has to track, etc.). In either case, it shouldn't be worth much more.
5 - again, maybe but easier to track.
Good questions, I've tried to outline the issue I've run into in the past -- /r/listentothis is a particularly interesting case, in that we want users to only upvote music that is new to them (that's the whole point of the sub), but we know that using a link-aggregator like that runs a bit counter to human nature
I like the idea, might be a good experiment, at least. One thing to note though is that I think I vote less here than on other places. Many times I just forget to even if I want to, I'm not sure why that is or whether it is a good or bad thing.
I agree with your pros and regarding the cons, I think inconsistency is probably the real baddie.
I'm thinking this might maybe mix well with another suggestion someone made a while ago: not showing votes until the user has voted. Kind of like a "blind vote". We could have a frontpage without vote buttons, and only after entering the comment page and voting would the vote count be shown. (Sort by would be unaffected).
It goes against "transparency" so I'm not sure, but I think it's not a bad idea.
I don't think I understand your second hanging question. The first one... I don't know. Maybe once Deimos deactivates automatic subscription to everything people will just stay in groups they're really interested in and there are more possibilities they will go into the comment section/read the links?
I'm guilty drive-by voting. Quite a lot actually. I've been voting for any article I find to be interesting, insightful, etc, even if it's not something I'm personally interested in.
Interesting article about music that talks about the history of some influential composer or something. Great, that's fantastic content that I feel benefits the site, and more people should see this, discuss this, and post more like it. Thing is I don't really care about composers. I skimmed the article and found it was a really good article, but I have literally nothing to say about it, so I'm not even going to bother opening the comments section.
I also see your point that voting on reddit tends to favour the lowest common denominator in content. I'm not sure if I see that as being as big a problem here, since votes don't factor into sorting by default.