in reply to RE: Votes & Reputation
in thread Votes & Reputation

I'm not certain that it would be bad for people to be able to see reputation before voting. I do agree it would be quite possible for people to abuse this by allowing it to influence their votes. However, it is already possible to jump on the bandwagon to some degree, by checking out Best Nodes and Worst Nodes (and why is it that 'Best' encourages you not to add a vote just because others have, but 'Worst' doesn't? hmm...).

Some good could come from seeing reputation before/without voting. As athomason mentioned, curiosity is possible where one does not feel qualified to vote. An example: I know nothing about a topic and see two posts which contradict each other; seeing the reputation could tell me a bit about which one fellow monks (who hopefully do know the topic) consider better.

Another reason was brought up by turnstep in RE:RE:Keep the vote XPs. Don't incrase vote #.. I think that higher monks, at least, could be trusted with the power to affect over- and under-valued nodes (if they wanted it--seeing reputation should be an option).

  • Comment on RE: Neshura's point on Votes & Reputation

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Neshura's point on xp and voting...v2.0
by neshura (Chaplain) on May 23, 2000 at 00:56 UTC
    Oh. yes. You are quite right -- if one can't/doesn't vote at all, which of two contradictory posts is to be believed?
    I am still wistfully hanging on to the idea that if one doesn't know which is right and which is wrong, one really ought not vote. Thus, the 'abstain' option...

    But of course, this is no help at all if you are an AM and are just looking for the right answer. Well, here's a possibility for use and abuse -- allow AM's to see reputation of all posts. They can't vote anyway. That way, if monks are particularly in need of seeing reputation, they could log out and view the post. This might discourage people from checking reputation obsessively before they vote -- it's a pain in the ass to log out and log in over and over again.

    Ahh, but run two browsers at once, one cookie-fied, one not, and it becomes quite easy to abuse...and don't think for a second that there aren't people out there thinking of the same thing :-)

    Finally, we could use common sense. If one of the two posts is by merlyn, it's probably the one to heed. Reputation consists of more than just a little number in a database somewhere.

    e-mail neshura

[reply]
      I don't think that people are going to let the current reputation of a post alter their voting decision too much. As I pointed out in a another post there is much more to be gained from always showing the reputation then the risk of slightly skewed poll results. Our system isn't all that scientific anyway, after all a post could have a low reputation because it dates back to the days when fewer people came here.
[reply]

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