I see big potential problems with this.

For one, when you vote, there is a 25% chance that you will gain XP. That would mean that when you unvote, there should be a 25% chance of losing XP. That could be implemented fairly easily, but there are other problems.

An upvote on a node that already has a reputation higher than the $NORM¹ has a better chance of resulting in an XP gain for the author than a downvote has of resulting in an XP loss. What that means is that you could pick a high rated node of your favorite monk and repeatedly upvote and unvote and his XP would climb. That is, unless that were accounted for.

Another problem is that people could (and therefore probably would) use it to see node rep without casting a vote. Or, more precisely, by casting a vote and then unvoting to get it back.

In short, I imagine this change would not be easy to implement, and I think it would result in more problems than benefits. If you vote by accident, then "oh well." It happens. Life goes on. They're just votes, not hundred dollar bills. And it's just XP, not fame and fortune...

Update: Looks like I misinterpreted your intention too. Yes, it's a great idea! And, as you now know, null votes have already been implemented. I use the feature all the time. In fact, the reason I didn't think that's what you meant is that I forgot it was configurable in your User Settings and that the default was disabled, probably because I have had it on since it was implemented.

1. See Voting/Experience System for details.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

In reply to Re: New Voting Option - UnVote by sauoq
in thread New Voting Option - UnVote by Theo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.