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Suggestion: default posts to 1 vote, since 0 votes can be disheartening
It's also not inaccurate to assume the user wants to vote on their own post. Of course 0 votes in the current system vs. 1 vote in the new system would mean exactly the same thing, the latter is a more positive experience.
I also brought this idea up as well. I think for comments you could probably safely leave them at 0 to start but for submissions, starting at 1 even though functionally no different than 0, does provide a weird sense of psychological reassurance and encouragement.
I'd bet it is functionally different. Starting at 0 rather than upvoted by the OP means the post won't have OP's vote weight added to it at the beginning, and that's why it is 0 rather than a 1. Of course we can just change the cosmetic aspect so that the total will never display as below 1, even though under the hood it actually does start at zero votes. That would mean hiding the first upvote, though, since it'll be invisible.
I do think not having a zero there has some psychological value.
Good point. But once vote wieght comes into play, won't that effectively mean when someone with higher vote weight actually does vote it will go from 1 to 1+(whatever their vote counts as), e.g. 1 to 2.25? So what difference does it make if it starts at 0 or 1? I don't think anybody is going to start with 0.25 vote weight and 1 is most likely going to be the baseline so why not include OPs 1 baseline vote to start?
That psychological value is pretty important too, IMO, since if something remains at 0 it's a lot more discouraging than if it sits at 1... even though they are the same it's still perceived as being different.
What about when the vote weight is 10 points? That might seem extreme, but if you have 20 million subscribers and the forum is a decade old, vote weights that extreme might be necessary for the OGs to maintain some kind of guidance over the content.
Also I'm pretty sure we're not displaying weighted totals to the users. They see one vote per person, the weighted number is only used for the rankings behind the scenes, so we don't have to worry about that.
The basic point is to make sure it takes a minimum of two people to bump something - one to post, and one to vote. If we get away from that we're heading into digg-power-user territory and that did not end well.
Well, first of all I don't know if it will ever be a good idea to have OGs have 10pt vote weight, even if they have maintained their trust within the groups for all that time since groups should ideally be resistant to rapid change and invasion/brigading but not immune from evolving entirely. Vote weight should be designed to aid the community by allowing newcomers time to be properly integrated before they can cause harm, but also not give OGs complete control over the group forever and always. That will just lead to cliques forming the likes of which even reddit has never seen.
Second, I do think an accurate representation of the numbers should be used... or simply not show numbers at all. Vote fuzzing is the dumbest thing on reddit and all it does is lead to resentment, confusion, and conspiracies, which were even worse when when +& - vote totals showed (both of which were fuzzed).
IMO, you either go all-in on transparency in regards to numbers or don't show them at all. Opaqueness (i.e. half-truth, half-lie) about numbers is just a bad idea and degrades trust in the site, its mechanics, other users and the admins themselves which leads to conspiratorial thinking becoming prevalent.
I'm with you. Don't let it impact the vote weight but make the cosmetic change.
Yeah, for comments it seems it doesn't show a count if it's 0 anyway. But for posts, right when you post, you see a 0. Part of it may be being used to reddit where seeing 0 implies a downvote troll, but even without that context, 1 is nicer to see than 0.
I'm not opposed to doing this (and it's very easy), but this is definitely one where I feel like I honestly don't "get it". As soon as you make your first post (or even just from looking at others'), you know that "1 vote" means exactly the same as zero—"nobody voted on this". So, at least to me, it seems like any benefit from it just disappears right away as soon as you realize that 1 is the starting point.
(Side note: I'd even argue that on reddit starting at 1 for submissions might be worse than starting at zero, because then you can tell when you get downvoted right away. Reddit doesn't display submission scores lower than zero, but it does show zero.)
I think it should be consistent between comments and topics though, so should I consider bringing the current comment behavior to topics and hiding the vote counter (only for the topic's author) until someone votes on it, instead of having them both start at 1?
I can get behind that. There is definitely a negative effect to seeing 0 though, even if it'd mean the same thing as 1. Not everyone thinks about things logically. For users coming from reddit, it'd be much worse too.
Alright, let's give it a shot - I updated now so that a topic's author doesn't see the voting until someone votes on it. Other users still need to see the zero so that they have a voting button though.
Yeah, I think just not displaying a score for something without votes is the way to go. Avoids all the unpleasantness of seeing a zero on your post without the headache of mucking around with the vote weights
Only thing is it can be inconsistent. It throws me off a bit too now when I don't see comment votes. Am I just looking at the wrong spot or does it have no votes yet? I assume that won't last long, but newbies should always be considered, and they may not adapt as well as others.
I'd prefer to see 1 by default.
I think as learning curves go, figuring out that votes don't display until you actually have them isn't too steep of one to ask of new users. And it seems like a decent trade-off for longer term good user experience.
I think one way to frame it so you do understand the issue is by saying:
By having it at 0 to start, it can be perceived by people that you're basically saying, "your opinion that this content is worthy of submitting doesn't count for anything", whereas by starting at 1 you are at least acknowledging that their opinion has some value.
Are there any studies showing this effect? It seems really strange to me.
I doubt it, but I would definitely love to read one. It's an interesting problem and not one I think many people have thought about. But the fact that the vast majority of places preemptively give the submitting OP 1 vote inherently says a lot, I think. Even YouTube allows you to thumbs up your own comments.
I think part of it is how it's viewed by different people:
But either way, when you take into account what people are used to, there will absolutely be a negative connotation to 0. On reddit 0 means someone explicitly downvoted you. It's ingrained in our consciousness now. "0 for a score is bad."
Very good point. Especially for anyone coming from reddit, 0 means someone went out of their way to downvote you right away. :/. Even if in all likelihood it was a bot or troll.