Think about the initial proposal about the licensing change. People upvoted it because they thought it was important and well-written, but disagreed with it in the comments. The SE team proceeded on because "85% of the votes were upvotes".
@M.A.R. No, I haven't proposed anything yet. I will do so in just a second
I would propose this: the normal set of votes would be used solely to indicate quality, as they are for main sites and support questions on meta sites, while we would introduce a new, separate set of "agreement/disagreement" votes that wouldn't affect reputation in any way.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog well, this is exactly how it works. We usually discuss feature requests and whether they're cool, stupid or stellar before posting them
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog alright. So for a new voting system, you need to show why the current one is flawed
And you losing a bunch of rep isn't a good example
Because it's earned way more easier than it's lost
The reason this FR would fail, in my opinion, is the problem with the current system isn't drastic enough to urge change
And an increase in complication
Ha, we're already in a lot of trouble teaching people how to use the two frigging arrows.
Plus, your proposal isn't going to address the underlying issue you're unhappy about.
Now I feel like talking in a bathroom alone. And the sound is echoing.
The current voting system makes people, especially those somewhere on the autism spectrum (like me), perplexed. "The question is clearly well-written and shows clear research effort, but just because you disagree with it it suddenly isn't written well enough and shows too little research effort. What is going on?"
Back in 2013, when I contributed here, this was absolutely perplexing for me. It took me a very long time to finally get it.
Since voting on meta sites mean something different on the main sites, can you change the tooltip as well:
This question is useful and clear --> I agree
This question is unclear or not useful --> I disagree
This answer is useful --> I agree
This answer is not useful --> I disagree
...or somet...
@M.A.R. Not just the tooltip. It was confusing for me as to why feature-requests and other questions (including those on main sites) were held to different standards. I couldn't understand it.
Look, what goes on in my mind is "hey, I had 127 steps to go before I get to see view counts. But just because I expressed an unpopular opinion, I've been thrown back two steps; now I need 129."
Society tells us that we should speak our mind out if we disagree with something. But I, as well as several AS people I know both IRL and online, have had a life of being forced into the corner if we say something people disagree with. To us, it feels like the same thing is happening again.
I.e. it's part of the same pattern, not some isolated incident (because NTs a.k.a. non-AS people don't usually experience such a thing as a systemic pattern).
@M.A.R. I can say, this behavior has had a chilling effect on my overall willingness to suggest ideas. Which is detrimental to a community where ideas should be free-flowing.
@M.A.R. I understand, especially seeing as the work on Channels, etc. has diverted resources from Q&A development.
I would propose this: the normal set of votes would be used solely to indicate quality, as they are for main sites and support questions on meta sites, while we would introduce a new, separate set of "agreement/disagreement" votes that wouldn't affect reputation in any way.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Careful what you wish for. I don't want ridiculous ideas from people who don't know what they're talking about just because it's free-flowing. It's exactly what a voting system is meant to prevent. The most stupid ideas are posted anyway, because their OPs don't even know they don't know. But no, I don't want a flurry of ideas. I want few, good ideas.
@M.A.R. I think this would make things simpler. While the overall code would be more complex and it would be just a teeny bit more complex for NTs used to the current system, it would make things much simpler for AS people and perhaps for newer NTs. Regular votes would just be for quality, nothing else, everywhere. A separate set of dis/agreement votes would make things simpler to understand and not an outright mess for people like me.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog as I said, adding a layer of complexity only makes things harder for nonnative speakers. We can't teach them how to use one pair of votes. How would we teach them to use two?
@M.A.R. Obviously ridiculous ideas would likely show no research effort to understand the ideologies of the system, and thus eligible for regular downvotes under my proposed system.
I recently submitted an MSO discussion question. In very short order it has been downvoted to the point where it appears on the rogues gallery of downvoted questions (i.e. the last page of questions sorted by votes, with 50 per page). It also has by far the worst net-votes-to-total-views rating o...
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I don't think we're getting anywhere. I keep insisting it's too complex a system, and you keep insisting it's a good idea. It's of course a good idea in an ideal world, where everyone knows their place and how to vote. Plus, it's 4 a.m. man! :) I need sleep.
I would propose this: the normal set of votes would be used solely to indicate quality, as they are for main sites and support questions on meta sites, while we would introduce a new, separate set of "agreement/disagreement" votes that wouldn't affect reputation in any way.
You also have the most rep on MSE... I'm not low rep here... but I admit to bouncing ideas off of people in the TL to see if I'm being stupid before asking.
In a large group, do you jump on a chair as soon as an idea pops into your head and scream it at the room? Or do you talk to a friend standing nearby first?
That said... Not losing rep doesn't change that... I just posted a meta on IPS and I'm scared shitless how it's going to go even though I won't lose rep.
@Shog9 I've known people who do the former... both IRL and here...
Everyone thinks ideas are valuable. Like they're ounce-sized gold nuggets, and the hard work is just digging them out of the ground. But it's research and refinement that's worth something; ideas are more like bauxite: common, easy to obtain, expensive to refine.
user202362
why, you don't think your company's CEO should also keep a hobby pig farm? How could you, it's such a brilliant idea! </trollololo>
Eh... that's something that I've learned here... I've talked to people arguing over the finer points of how something should be implemented here and all I've ever realized is that the basic, general thoughts of what someone comes up with are probably all that's going to get implemented... y'all have so much to deal with on your end and put your own spin on things... we can talk through it all but we can't really direct what gets implemented in the end.
So, I try not to get too bogged down in the details. It's the general concept that's important.
@JonEricson great idea, mules can be mistaken as unicorns too ... donkey might be cheaper but mules definitely look ... more majestic if you know what I mean ...
user202362
user202362
pattern recognition probably would return 97% match between a unicorn and a mule ...
@Shog9 That's not the correct summary; just a potential proposal I came up with on the side. The correct summary is this: I believe that the current voting system on meta presents a genuine inclusivity issue for people like me.
I realize that this is specifically addressed in "What is "meta"? How does it work?":
Voting is different on meta.
Like normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta allows members to vote on questions and answers. For most posts, votes reflect the perceived usefulness: well-written, well-reasoned, ...
After spending some time on Meta Stack Overflow, I realized the voting system here is completely different. The votes are used for agreement or disagreement toward the question/request and the answer itself instead of quality. However, by downvoting a post, it will also decrease one's reputation ...
@SensibleAlexander I was just tossing around that idea. Read the second half of the conversation, which explains how the current voting system (IMO) disenfranchises AS people. Starting here: chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6620872#6620872
I'm sorry to hear about your condition. Anyway, I failed to find any posts related to voting system and AS on MSE. Feel free to post, I'm not sure I can comment further.
In the developer story section, 3 unicode characters are appearing just before the date. ( red freehand circles in image)
while inspecting, it seems like chrome misinterpret the spaces to the unicode characters
Chrome V 63
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (K...
> oops seems like it's not happening on incognito. I think one of the extension convert the separator dot to this character. deleting post... – Sagar V 12 secs ago edit
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog look, I'm not trying to be rude... But I really do not have the time. If you want to have a conversation, then begin a conversation don't throw me a link to a conversation with someone else; I have plenty of those to read already. If you just want to make a point and have folks read and consider it, then kick off a meta discussion in which you state your argument and present evidence to support it.
every group presents an "inclusivity issue" for anyone not in that group; they must either address the group as an outsider or find a way to become part of the group, and neither one is trivial.
Why is meta especially difficult for you vs. someone who just joined Stack Overflow to ask a question vs. a newly-hired co-worker of mine vs. a reporter for NYMag?
@Shog9 Truth is, I've been holding off on making such a post because it could be perceived as just a rant. I saw you edited someone's similar post about a mental health issue, which was at first perceived as a rant as well.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I do things like that hoping others see them and learn from it
When I show up a few hours late and make such an edit, there's little chance of altering the course of the question I'm editing - at best it's a long shot. But it sets an example for those who might wish to do better in their own questions or offer aid to the next problematic question they see posted.
On per-site metas, your reputation doesn't change. But on MSE, your reputation goes down if you propose something unpopular, which has a few things wrong with it: 1. you can get privileges taken away and be set further away from future ones just for proposing something unpopular, even if you did your research and wrote the request well, 2. the voting system is especially confusing for autists because (chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/89?m=6620872#6620872), and 3...
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog the fallacy there is assuming that something is well-researched and well-written and folks are downvoting it for reasons that are outside of the control of the author
3. we AS people have had a life of being pushed away from groups and losing social standing for proposing unpopular things in real life, and it has a chilling effect on our willingness to come up with ideas. This voting system is basically a reflection of that.
You said you were worried about it looking like a rant... if you follow those guidelines, you're going to avoid that... which means that, even if people disagree with you, you'll probably get fewer downvotes, more upvotes and less damage to your reputation... but there are lots of questions on MSE about getting rid of rep on MSE entirely or changing penalties for downvotes...
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog this puts the cart before the horse. Generally-speaking, a universally-unpopular idea will not be implemented; more broadly, a largely-unpopular proposal will do little to further the cause it seeks to support - thus it's safe to say that even if the cause is eventually adopted, it will be in spite of the proposal not because of it.
Therefore, if you support an idea but are at a loss as to how to garner support for it... You're better off saying nothing until you arrive at a persuasive argument.
I would propose this: the normal set of votes would be used solely to indicate quality, as they are for main sites and support questions on meta sites, while we would introduce a new, separate set of "agreement/disagreement" votes that wouldn't affect reputation in any way.
(you can quote messages by posting a link to them on a line by themselves - this saves a good deal of time)
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog maybe I'm out of steam for the day but I glanced this answer over and I have no idea what you wrote there. Your penchant for linking without quoting is probably killing you.
FYI, I'm dividing my time between this conversation and tending to a script that's locking all ID questions on Movies & TV, so I much appreciate anything that removes further distractions
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog the fallacy there is assuming that something is well-researched and well-written and folks are downvoting it for reasons that are outside of the control of the author
@M.A.R. Obviously ridiculous ideas would likely show no research effort to understand the ideologies of the system, and thus eligible for regular downvotes under my proposed system.
Folks often suppose that voting on meta behaves differently from voting on all the other sites. That readers are evaluating posts which they find informative and moving, and then tossing aside this evaluation to vote on some other metric. I have not observed this to be the case.
Folks vote for many reasons, but generally they do so consistently: a reader who seeks a solution to a problem will vote for a post that provides that solution and perhaps vote against a post that misleads them or otherwise wastes their time. This is true on meta as it is elsewhere.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Try 1) summing up (intro and conclusion). 2) using bullet points. 3) using terse, shorter sentences. 4) using one-sentence paragraphs. 5) using descriptive headings. 6) editing out redundancy.
A reader who likes an idea will reward a post that presents justification for that idea with which they can agree... And punish a post that presents an abhorrent or confusing justification.
...I used to joke that a certain regular author on MSE was a great boon to the site as he would often propose previously-popular ideas but present them in a style that was engineered to be polarizing and belittling, with justifications that were unappealing to most users of the site.
He could thus turn a popular but flawed idea into an unpopular one simply by proposing it in his usual manner.
@AdamLear not sure why this needed migration? I assume there is just one Prettify build that you use across all sites that have Prettify enabled. Which make such requests on-topic for MSE, right?
@Shog9 @AaronHall @Catija OK, I'll use the advice offered to make a discussion post about AS inclusivity and the voting system after thinking about it some more.
To your other point above though, @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog: it is often the case that AS folks struggle to perceive or grant sufficient weight to social conventions. This can be a serious hurdle to social acceptance... But not necessarily an insurmountable one.
@rene Yes and no. If it requires a plugin, those are sometimes enabled per-site. But honestly I didn't think too hard about it, mostly just saw "Stack Overflow" and moved it over. It could go either way, as I think about it now, but meh.
It becomes all the more critical not to mislead them: it is critical to realize that voting and reputation exist as a sideshow, not as an end-goal. Persuasive writing is achievable for many classified as AS, though often with much more difficulty than would afflict others; it is important that they not be misled into thinking that when interacting with a group their hurdle lies elsewhere.
This is why I grit my teeth when I hear folks dismissing a post's issues as "voting is different on meta" - it deprives the author of a chance of success by blaming it on a faceless monster.
2
Of course, this is true to some extent for everyone, and thus all stand to benefit by removing misleading messaging from the system.
@Shog9 @AaronHall @Catija OK, I'll use the advice offered to make a discussion post about AS inclusivity and the voting system after thinking about it some more.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog No. It's not conjecture at all. Several times it's been noted that the rep is irrelevant... I don't like being downvoted on child metas any more than on MSE, regardless of rep loss.
The difficulty is when no one else is asking the question so you have to 1. ask it neutrally and hope someone else will say what you want to say. 2. ask it neutrally and self answer. 3. soapbox.
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog As someone who always takes things literally - you're not the only one. Some people just don't get humor/sarcasm/etc, regardless of diagnosed conditions.
Maybe we should all rename ourselves to Sonic characters. @Shadow did too, @Zoe plans to rename herself to "Rouge the Bat" provided the results of her poll don't drastically change...
@Catija It started out from a simple message (when I was still called gparyani) where I kept calling Shadow Wizard "Shadow the Hedgehog". He then changed his username to "Shadow the Hedgehog Wizard". Later, he put up a poll asking for his future username.
In a bid to keep him named that, I changed my username to "Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog". Apparently my plan ended up working, and the top vote was to keep him named after Shadow the Hedgehog.
Given that, and given that the top result on @Zoe's poll is to rename her to another Sonic character, I just commented that maybe we should all change our names to Sonic characters