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6:00 PM
Honnestly I like the commenting system on SE, I talk a lot about their moderation on MSE, but with the upvote and such I think they do their job (comment), it's just that when it come to moderate, all mods got their own view of it, of what to do in abuse, etc.. I cant even get an answer on how much warning a user get if he abuse, and especially if it's a high rep user versus a lowrep user that abuse.
and they do - because those wrong answers have upvotes
so I want to be able to slap a warning on each and every one of them pointing out specifically what is wrong with it, to warn those people hoping for a neater answer than mine
... way that doesn't leave well-meaning people with suspensions, must I add since I don't trust myself to make no mistakes.
and comments are the only means I have to do that
@MarkAmery Robert Cartaino has suggested in the past a system which I consider close to ideal: essentially, comments "age out" into a sort of linked chat or "talk page" where they can still be discussed but are no longer pinned under the post itself. Recent or highly-voted comments persist a bit longer on the page, but eventually age out too.
In place of where comments sit now, you end up with a sort of abbreviated timeline: recent comments, edits, etc. are summarized in reverse-chronological order as a quick guide to "what's going on with the post"
(this would also have the handy side-effect of allowing post authors to more readily see what folks are doing when they edit)
@Shog9 which leaves highly voted incorrect answers without any sign of disagreement about them.
6:03 PM
@JohnDvorak discuss this answer (438)
I dont like that idea, I got a lot of good information in comment
i mean... if someone found it useful... who are we to argue?
@Shog9 More like "discuss this answer (1)" leading to a single-message timeline hiding a message with 438 upvotes.
Remember again, it's extremely likely that most readers do not read comments, even if they would benefit from doing so. The fact that some of them are currently displayed below the post provides at best a false sense of security, of having done as much as could be done to address the problem.
Who ever will click that link?
6:05 PM
I even see answer in comment, and why people do that, because it's lazyness to not write a full feaatured answer. Moving them will make good info to be lost
@Shog9 in the system you describe, people would repost criticisms over and over to repin them to visible section under the answer
rightly so
you'd waste lots of people's time on what is essentially busywork
Presumably such a room would be permanent... the moved to chat comments now don't persist for too long.
don't they? O_O
6:07 PM
@MarkAmery maybe. Or maybe the answer gets edited finally, by the original author or someone else.
@Shog9 see my previous thesis that most bad answers are irredeemable except by editing them to be basically the same as somebody else's answer
@Shog9 The former hasn't been on SO for years. The latter would have to change the intent of the post to do so.
hey
hey
In addition to Robert's suggestion, I'm thinking of gold-tag badger able to pin a comment on tagged question. Not sure about the possible abuse/other bad consequences
@hey I love that proposal
@Shog9 The warnings come after the spells?
6:08 PM
Y'all may disagree, but... I don't think comments are actually solving these problems right now. It just feels like they are, because the relative handful of people who know to look for them can find the errata without much trouble.
@JohnDvorak Couple of weeks of inactivity and the room is frozen if not deleted... I don't remember all of the rules exactly.
That's the worst possible solution: the one that doesn't work but makes you think it has.
they solve problems for me frequently, because I know to look in the comments
Should we outlaw chainlink fences because people climb over them nevertheless?
I realise that's potentially far from ideal
but even if only 5% of users are checking the comments, they still have value as they stand
6:10 PM
@MarkAmery yeah, me too. I also read the Wikipedia talk pages. You think either of us are typical of the average reader or even the average Stack Overflow user?
@Shog9 same argument applies to answer votes, actually
to an even greater extent
also important is that the proportion of voting users who look at the comments is almost certainly high, @Shog9
Really need to update the chat FAQ :P
+1. The link comment => votes must not be overlooked.
pointing out flaws to other users that make them realise they should downvote instead of upvoting is valuable in terms of its impact on what answers rise up
even if most readers never see those comments
6:11 PM
There are a lot of times that I put "announcement" comments on posts and I'd like to be able to pin those...
@MarkAmery Yes, as if a comment talk about to correct an answer, I dont DV and wait usually, I dont take action, someone already reacted
@Catija How about those yellow banners that mods can access?
@JohnDvorak They're fixed. We can't edit them.
We can get them created for us, IPS has a special one we share with TWP but the CMs have to create them for us and we have to have a broader need.
6:13 PM
BTW, did I ever get an answer on whether the staff think that my "nonsense" comment is discourteous enough to warrant deletion or did I get distracted and stop pressing for one? :P
@MarkAmery it's the latter :P
@MarkAmery if it got flagged, I'd probably just edit out the first sentence
I rarely edit comments, but that's a good example of nonsense followed by useful information
(geddit? Eh? Eh??)
use/mention ambiguity
very witty :P
The funny is not with you today... despite it being may the fourth.
6:15 PM
so, I don't think that'd be an ideal solution, but I'm reassured that you wouldn't purge it
May the fourth be with us...
I'm just pining for a good G&T before the tequila folks take over
(I don't think it'd be ideal because it moves the key piece of information - that having multiple primary_key columns was not the cause of the bug being asked about in the question - to the end of the comment, where previously it was implied by the first four words)
which is a totally unfair reason for me to criticise your choice because you can't possibly know that out of context
A thought crossed my mind - just how much permanent damage a rogue mod is able to do simply by editing comments.
@Shog9 Is that your idea of hell? A bar that serves only tequila? or a Mezcal bar?
6:17 PM
but then, that's a risk innate in mods handling comments without full context
@Catija I frequent a bar like that. But they do have a small selection of whisky and beer, so they're ok
@JohnDvorak We can see the edit history of the comments and who edited them.
hey
hey
Oh, it's almost happy hour already?
I guess my second question, @Shog9, is whether prior to the great kindness project you would've handled that hypothetical flag on my comment differently
@MarkAmery no
6:18 PM
so, what's actually changed, policy-wise?
@Catija I thought the edit history of a comment is a thing that doesn't exist. Nice.
what would now be deleted that would not before?
@JohnDvorak They turned it on a year ago or so... lemmie see if I can find the post.
if the answer is "nothing" then hurrah, I've been worried about nothing and can carry on as I always did
6:18 PM
No need to search, your word will do
if the answer is "something" then what is the something?
Normal users are shown the number of times a comment was edited, which includes edits by a mod after the 5-minute self-edit period lapses.
Cool, cause I can't find it :P
oh man, talking about mods editing comments reminded me of this extremely relevant Meta post of mine on UX a couple of years ago: ux.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3130/47336
Why though? What use is me knowing the number of times a comment was edited?
6:20 PM
(given that we were speaking of different politeness standards)
@MarkAmery remains to be seen. The problem has never really been policy, but tooling and organization to communicate and enforce policy. Comment moderation has been a shit-show for years and we've been mostly powerless to improve it.
@Catija Find the edit history, or the number of times it was edited?
I think that the Blog post was more of a call to action, not a change of policy.
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Neither. The post stating that they'd made the UI change to allow mods to see comment edit histories.
@Shog9 Agreed. Though, consistent handling of chat flags by mods would go a long way.
Also, after carefully reading April's Medium post, it's not complaining about policy. It's only complaining about tone.
...i.e. the way we enforce policy
6:23 PM
well, I'm glad to have many of my fears mostly alleviated. I'll sleep better tonight. (My final comment at meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366969/… was not hyperbole.)
Same here
Relevant:
32
A: A guide to moderating comments

Shog9When should moderators edit comments? Almost never. Comments have no publicly visible revision history (the changes are logged in case of abuse, but these are only visible to moderators). Therefore, it is critical that moderator edits do not misrepresent the author's meaning or intentions. Edits...

Terms of Service changed post was downvoted. Let the Reversal badges flow!
@Shog9 I've apparently previously upvoted that post, so apparently I agree with your stance on it :P
then God is in His Heaven, and all is right with the world.
6:26 PM
And rereading it, "Also, your mom" made me smile
oh, in fact, @Shog9, I've previously commented on that answer with a link to the same UX Meta post that I linked to earlier
so clearly your sense that it was relevant accords with mine :P
heh, sure enough
wow... Three years ago. Time does fly
I just queried for comments of mine using the word, "nonsense." stackoverflow.com/q/41617286/621962
:/
I went looking for a review bug answer I wrote yesterday, thinking "this can't be more than a few months old". 3 years, 5 months ago it was.
@canon that's a great comment, I think, instructive and not insulting
@canon search-replace "nonsense" -> "poppycock"
6:30 PM
@Shog9 LOL
:O Mom, the community manager said "cock"
"-1" -> "Tut tut, old bean!"
looks like rain?
@MarkAmery I guess that depends on context and interpretation. I also called the question "useless" a few comments before. :/
@MarkAmery Sadly, I can't kick him and have it be effective.
Oh, are you my Mom now, @Catija? That's nice.
6:33 PM
No... But I think I'm the only female RO in here, so close enough.
clearly I meant, uh, "CoC". Obvious typo, could happen to anyone.
Why was KennyBOT able to post, despite being kicked?
Do kicks not apply to messages posted from the API?
@Shog9 There's a reason I don't use my real name on SE...
goes to look up Cat's real name
It's in my email signature.
6:34 PM
oh. Yes. Good call.
@Catija "Catherine the Great?" You made that up...
Hey, at least you spelled it correctly.
Evening people
Hiya :D
how's it going?
for some reason I came home from work and just passed out until just now
hey
hey
6:38 PM
@Catija there's another female RO here, but she went MIA...
@user5389107 Emotional exhaustion? Sounds like you needed the rest.
@Catija I'd never leave my bed
@Catija Could be. I have sensory processing issues and today was busy
@hey Oh? Who? Maybe I don't remember.
hey
hey
@Catija the duck that recurses infinitely disappeared long before you came here, so it's understandable you didn't know about it though...
6:40 PM
Ah. I was thrown off by the quote in the description.
I feel particularly dickish now about my comment to Tim at meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665/… now that I know that the great purge of critical comments from the site that I was afraid of is... in fact completely nonexistent, and never intended in the first place
Like, I realised at the time after my frustration cooled off slightly that it wasn't exactly a charitable, productive comment
We did flag some comments but I'd argue the ones we flagged had it coming
But now with more data I guess I wasn't just being uncharitable and aggressive, but was outright tilting at windmills
I didn't believe it at first either but believe me some of these were really awful
6:43 PM
if the examples I've seen are indicative, I don't disagree, @user5389107
and I just looked at a very small sample
Mar 3 at 3:18, by Shog9
eh. Everyone loses sight of congeniality from time to time. How you recover is up to you.
@MarkAmery The good thing is that we found out - and frankly, you would have never if you weren't, in your words, dickish.
My favorite recent Shog quote :P
well, I only found out by coming here and engaging the staff in a back-and-forth, @JohnDvorak
none of my commentary on Meta ever really led to much concrete clarification of what policy change the blog post represented
6:44 PM
I'm not feeling great about what I said to Taryn 2 days ago either
Being dismissive and all that
@TravisJ I'll be honest I havent seen Julia Roberts in a long time
Just append a :) to all comments. Problem solved. /shades
@user5389107 I don't think I saw; what did you say (if you're willing to share)?
hey
hey
@canon "Welcome to Stack Overflow. Your question sux :)"
precisely
6:46 PM
> Welcome to Costco I love you
@SterlingArcher Wow, can't believe I got that reference lol
I'm pretty sure some of the objectionable comments already have :) at the end
"hey ur a very pretty lady can i haz nudes? :)"
how much worse would they be without it?
I'm not sure it's particularly transformative either way, @canon
6:47 PM
It was a joke.
ahem, :)
hey
hey
@canon like this? "Welcome to Stack Overflow. Your question sux 😄"
Not sure if paraphrasing objectionable comments is wise considering the tension in the air in chats?
But I'm no mod so feel free to ignore me
Just don't want no more trouble ya know :(
I think we're comfortably on the right side of objectionable, @SterlingArcher
@MarkAmery if you feel that way, then you can always apologize. Tim's had a bit of a rough go and I'm sure he'd appreciate some love. ;)
2
@MarkAmery I think so too, but it's a slippery slope. Just be careful :)
6:49 PM
I feel like I've been overall a lot more uncharitable then necessary with staff lately
I'm firmly on the side of "don't want any trouble"
If it's not aware already though, @Taryn @Shog9 and @TimPost despite my (hopefully constructive) protests, I still hold you all in very high regards and appreciate what you do.
4
See, that's why you aren't on my squeaky wheel list. It's like you're not even trying.
But, thanks
Expanding personal comment search to include comments contaning the words: nonsense, inappropriate, improper, wrong, terrible, horrible, cancer, disaster, and disastrous...
thx Sterling
6:50 PM
@canon cancer?
I may not be a squeaky wheel but I'm definitely the wrong size wheel
Square wheel?
I'm like the wheel you got at the used tire shop that is 3 inches the wrong size compared to the other wheel
@MarkAmery I don't know... I might have been edgy and suggested that a proposed answer was cancerous.
aha, I see
6:51 PM
Ah, like the pile of wheels I have in my attic
@Shog9 no that's the canadian wheel
Oh yay, office beer!
Have a great weekend everybody
Pro-tip regarding t-shirt purchase: There's no such thing as too big
you too
Pro tip regarding wheels: don't carry a dozen wheels up a ladder. You will find any excuse not to carry them back down.
that sounds like a safety hazard
6:53 PM
35 messages moved to Chimney
So, Forbes writes a lot on conflict resolution. Some of their articles give a decent amount of advice that would really work well at making canned comments, or comments regarding "your question sux kthxbai", into a more constructive and less combative situation.
This is a good place to start, for those interested: forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2015/07/08/…
And in general, there is an absolute wealth of knowledge available in this google list of their articles google.com/search?q=forbes+letting+people+down+easy
@MarkAmery oh, this won't do at all. Buddy, we got your back - me & @Tim will circle up first thing next week & figure out a plan for a Great Comment Purge.
Is anyone else worried that Shog's "pile of wheels" is a metaphor for something more sinister?
Maybe we'll target C++ comments. Those folk have it coming.
@canon I read it as removing everyone's 2 cents.
7:01 PM
We'll call it... "the BEST comment purge"
(but in title case)
@Shog9 Nah. It's enough that their chatroom will disappear
Stack Overflow. Making comments great again.
drop table comments;?
@TravisJ please leave
No, next question :)
7:03 PM
@Shog9 sounds good to me, I'm not a C++ man
The comments feature is gone next week. Suggest improvements though ...
@canon I can't think of anything more sinister than the plain reading.
A major problem with comments on questions that are going to be removed is that there isn't much explanation as to how the issue raised relates to what is important to Stack Overflow.
@TravisJ @TravisJ these seem to either 1) require padding a comment with pleasantries (often not possible - we're space-constrained) or would be disingenuous and fail to achieve the purpose of the criticism (if I comment to point out an answer is wrong, it's not a "yes, but" situation and I probably want to be clear to other readers that on net I don't agree with the poster)
For example, the comments on this question asked a few minutes ago stackoverflow.com/q/50181594/1026459
7:06 PM
@Shog9 C++ is a dark, arcane, Lovecraftian place to operate. Those made to toil in the shadow of its edifice shuffle about in disheveled rage and confusion... lashing out irrationally. There is no patience. There is no decorum. There is only the darting of terrified eyes and howling madness.
While I understand the frustration of dealing with that type of question, leaving a comment there should at least explain why proper tags are important, and how that factors into Stack Overflow's goal.
oops. @TravisJ @TravisJ, he's so important that I addressed him twice. At least now I know how the "reply to this message" function works.
hey
hey
I just opened Lounge's transcript for fun and I was welcomed by... (NSFW?). Not sure what should I do in addition of closing the tab...
@canon C++ was my bread & butter for a decade... I'm well aware.
7:08 PM
@Shog9 :I think he means the chatroom
applies to both
@MarkAmery Some of the guidance there absolutely does not fit. But some does. For example, explaining the why of what went wrong, and how it fits into the goals of Stack Overflow.
It's a lovely language though, really. Unfortunately, it's three languages.
C++ is syntax sugar for assembler. PHP is syntax sugar for C++.
@MarkAmery - A lot of users complain that new users, or confused users, or whichever, the users who ask questions that are definitely going to be deleted - complain that they never read the rules and don't know how it works here. It would make sense then, when directly confronting those users on their questions, to explain the reasoning of the rules they messed up on, and why those rules are in place.
7:10 PM
@hey the image is a chat transcript that's been circulating. One of those sex bots that hit you up on, say, Skype out of the blue & try to get you to follow a link to something bad.
This kind of goes hand in hand with the reason that "What have you tried" is a one click removal. If you are not invested enough to work with someone beyond just a drive by comment, why leave on at all? So to, if you are not invested enough to try to solve the problem you are observing, why point it out to everyone who can see it while not explaining it to the OP, arguably the one person who clearly is not getting it in the situation.
> "What have you tried" is a one click removal. If you are not invested enough to work with someone beyond just a drive by comment, why leave on at all?

On that point, at least, I completely agree with you. It's also why I generally don't like canned comments; they tend to be 50% relevant at best to the question at hand, and I just read them and think *really? you cared enough to criticise, but not enough to be specific?*
@Shog9 readys the wagons for his alter-ego
argh why does chat markdown hate me?
7:18 PM
it doesn't want me to quote things and reply to them in the same message
I do agree though, I don't find canned comments terribly productive
hey
hey
OOT & random FR: I think OP should be able to remove their chat message even after 2 minutes when it gets starred, to prevent out-of-context misunderstanding
Why... why does that image exist, @Shog9?
7:19 PM
This was Community User's first AI art exercise.
Images can be helpful in explaining things to people
@Shog9 Wait, do we have a chatbot that handles that stuff for us? That's amazing! #dronestrike
"kick" is a bit of a misnomer
!kb ?
@hey One can always ping an RO to clear the stars on the message
7:45 PM
Anonymous
I just saw this in my Twitter feed and was intrigued. They seem to be talking through editing a question for potential reopening.
Anonymous
Jen Weber & Chris Manson - May I Ask A Question?: Jen Weber and Chris Manson will be live streaming Stack Overflow Q&A on Twitch Friday at 8am EST/1pm UTC. #emberjs http://bit.ly/2FFcwhd
Anonymous
Here is the question. It still needs reopen votes. They seem to make that case pretty well that asking how to do this in conformance with the JSON:API spec and CakePHP framework is an appropriately-constrained problem, not particularly opinionated or open-ended.
@user1114 I cast a reopen vote on it just now
7:56 PM
man. doing that publicly is so open to abuse
I wish that reviews would have stats like edits do.
As long as they're picking other people's posts, I don't think it's an issue.
@Shog9 - Is there any sort of mechanism that looks for how many times multiple users cast the same close vote as far as sock detection goes?
oh, i meant from trolls pouncing on it
seems fine so far
idk I found @user1114 's argument in favor of the question convincing so I cast a reopen vote
sure I wouldn't have if I hadn't seen it linked here, but that's more of a visibility thing
not much different from someone posting a in socvr for instance
8:03 PM
i disagree with his reasoning, the way the question was formed is what pushed it toward being opinion based, and now the wording is fixed
Kind of a pedantic reason for a topic not to get an answer.
> Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience
A lot of users seem to overlook that part of the close reason.
at the end of the day, it's still up to interpretation even including that part.
So... There's a bigger question here... do you want a closed, unclear question, or do you want an open question that might help the asker but, more importantly, that might help a broader group of people who have the same question? Even if the new question isn't exactly what the OP had in mind, it's going to help them a lot more than the question being closed.
@Catija can we have both? Ask a clear question inspired by the former
@JohnDvorak And then watch it get closed as a duplicate :P
8:08 PM
And, without understanding how the wording made it primarily opinion based, the OP may have no clue how to fix the question, so helpful edits are a great way of showing the OP how to frame a question well. It does require some work, though.
It doesn't work like that @JohnDvorak.
Just askin' :)
I think the edit was good, and easily pulls it out of the primarily opinion based bin.
and it still seems to be the same quesiton
The edit was mostly trivial though. That it now "looks" not primarily opinion based just shows that there is a severe problem with that close reason.
Either that, or a severe problem with its interpretation.
Sure, we don't want questions about opinions. However, there has to be a line, because there are way too many situations where a question can only be answered with experience.
"How can i do this better?"
doesn't make it primarily opinion based, but if you removed that, it'd be less likely to be interpreted as such
we can't just magically make everyone with flag/closure privileges think the same way
8:15 PM
@TravisJ I think most close reasons have similar problems; people pattern-match based upon superficial details of how the question is asked. Over at meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311788/1709587 I once said "if a trivial rephrasing that doesn't change what the question is asking makes it clearly on-topic, then it's already on topic and nobody should be voting to close it" and I wish that I could somehow drill that idea into the mind of everyone with close vote powers
2
Happy happy hour!
2 hours ago, by Shog9
...if you're about to point out how I'm often rude in my own comments... Yeah, I know. I try to do better. I'm bad at it.
lol... wut? Shog's the model citizen.
@MarkAmery I agree with that.
Apparently just leaving opened ended comments aimed at Shog causes him to self reflect
Yeah I was pretty taken aback by that from Shog, too, @AaronHall
There are a handful of specific points of policy I've strongly disagreed with Shog on - the biggest being his opposition to explaining downvotes - but "often rude" is not a claim I would ever think to make about him
What's this about a great comment purge being a new thing? I've been low-key purging junk comments on the Python tag for a couple of years now...
Someone on Twitter's been complaining
8:23 PM
It's easier on Python because I know what's junk and what's not.
oh, absolutely - I'm a prolific comment flagger, too, @AaronHall. We're talking about purging of "unkind" comments
my fear was that the call to action to get rid of "unkind" comments in Jay's blog post was going to result in comments criticising answers getting wiped out en masse
oh... withholds potentially unkind joke about particular tags
but post-conversation it sounds like I was reading too much into it
so was I
8:27 PM
so you can be as unkind as you like about those tags, @AaronHall ;)
Well the thing is when you're getting rid of any comment except the arguably correct criticisms (which we should carefully keep) it's hard for... unkind... comments to persist.
It usually takes me a couple of minutes to fully parse and unwind a thread of comments on a single post though.
depends how you parse "unkind". My reading was that most criticism was innately unkind; evidently that's not what the staff intended, which is a reilef
anyway, sorry to bail mid-conversation but I gotta run; cya
happy Friday!
user359686
\o
8:31 PM
happy friday y'all
continues Thus I have to be "motivated" to clean up a page. Questions with high views and their highly ranked answers definitely have my attention.
It got 50 views since a year ago? Nah.
Sometimes a flag motivates me to do a full cleanup, but then I look at the view count, and I think, well, that was probably a waste of time...
@AaronHall The hardest are posts with 30+ comments, half of which are flagged... and the subject I just know is going to be difficult to wade into... It's difficult to find the energy to really dig in.
So... yeah. I absolutely do not wish that we "shame" anyone, that is a horrible way to go, but I am a bit concerned about the effects of the votes on that person @Shog9. As I said, they seem to generally think that these votes prove their point about the larger meta population, and I do start to think there have been a lot of posts like that in the last years. One can wonder what really they have learned.
@FélixGagnon-Grenier isn't that sorta always true, for everyone?
absolutely :)
8:36 PM
Maybe Question downvotes should have a marginal cost?
Fractional rep? :P
And I mean actual fractions, not decimals.
why not?
Because we need to do what the stock market did.
8:37 PM
We need to encourage question downvotes, not discourage them
was just about to continue saying that I most certainly am not aware of most of the internal discussion that have been had, and trust that y'all know what you are doing. If there is a difference between that "sorta true for everyone", it might be the different influence people can have.
For instance, I certainly have less reach than they do.
@JohnDvorak Why?
@FélixGagnon-Grenier I mean... pretty sure I still hold the record for the most downvoted meta post. What effect do you think that's had?
Because it's useful signal
@Shog9 I thought that was one of Joel's?
@JohnDvorak isn't it a stronger signal when there's a cost?
8:41 PM
no
@JohnDvorak ah, no... Sam, Kasra, then me. I'm #3
Bronze badge of shame
Aaaanyway
@Shog9 Peer pressure, you mean?
the point got across, I understand with bronze ;)
If anyone was expecting me to say, "oh, this has quite the low score, I suppose I'm completely wrong about all of this"... Well, a few people obviously did and were disappointed with the outcome.
@Shog9 a few?
8:43 PM
OTOH, while I hold fast to my evaluation of the problem... it's not like I don't recognize that I could've probably approached the problem differently and gotten different results.
Well, a verifiable metric could be delta between first and last revisions, and evolution over time
... but yeah, I've food for thought, ta. bbl
@JohnDvorak If there's such a thing as noisy downvotes, I think it makes downvotes a stronger signal if there's a cost to them. #changemymind
The amount of downvotes would decrease much more significantly than the signal per downvote would increase. You'd also likely observe decrease in the number of folks able to exercise moderation. Do you have data that corroborates your noisy downvote hypothesis?
On IPS I sometimes wish we could change the mechanic for downvotes on answers. I feel like we really need to encourage them there and, with the attention we get from the HNQ and so few people who come to the site being able to DV at all... it makes for some really lopsided voting.
@JohnDvorak I have my own experience with arbitrary and capricious voters, which I documented here.
These were for the most part, low-rep, new users.
8:54 PM
The original assumption that trusted members should be in charge of these things has changed over time in that it is much easier to have amassed enough reputation to take part in moderation now. While it is just as hard to get 1000 rep as before in a small time frame, users who have posted only a few things, given 4 years, can easily have slowly floated into the rep limits for moderation privileges.
FTR: I also oppose the idea of raising the minimum rep to downvote
I'm curious how much of an effect not showing downvotes beyond -1 for questions for a while would have
there's a lot of pile on voting
From time to time I catch myself doing it
I don't think it would help. -1 is enough
@JohnDvorak I'm not suggesting raising it.
I predict more downvotes - no basis for sympathy anymore.
8:55 PM
At that point, there is the existing signal that this is not useful, or lacks research. That is what others are piling on with, the signal that there is something wrong.
Regardless of if the signal is weak or not, that it exists will not change.
for a while, i had barely enough rep to downvote on metaSE, and as such, i didn't do so on answers that i otherwise would have because it would have put me below the threshold of being able to downvote at all.

I don't think downvotes on answers should be free, and would support a cost on question downvotes, but first i'd rather find a solution to the former
true, but I think there's a marked difference between seeing your own post at -1 and at -9
After I get another 500 rep on MSE I'll be DVing all the things. ;)
-1 feels salvageable, if you have -9 might aswell throw in the towel
There is, however, -9 is pretty hard to achieve.
8:56 PM
idk i've seen it on some questions i'd consider salvageable with minor op edits
how often do pile on downvotes go that extreme though?
Lately, to kind of gauge how bad the bad really is, I have been looking at the newest list, finding a post at -3, and just watching it for 15 minutes. I haven't found a -9 yet.
i've seen things linked in chat quickly go -4 or -5, but rarely does it get as high as -9 unless it's reaaaaaaly bad
-9 was kind of arbitrarily picked tbh
@JohnDvorak Fastest Train Wreck?
8:57 PM
I have found a lot of rather poor taste comments, and a lot of questions that clearly need deletion.
I'd thought that, for questions, particularly by new users, it might be interesting to stop counting DVs at -4. Users can keep downvoting but there's no effect.
@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ for the record
I like the idea of not showing the downvote count to post authors for questions for a while, but only a "Your question needs work" thing
The thing is, that -4 is all you need to pull it off the front page, so the question doesn't really need to go farther than that.
I don't think that downvotes are the problem.
Or even a problem.
8:58 PM
@TravisJ I agree that the downvotes themselves aren't a problem, but how new users percieve them is
Consider that excessive downvotes would tend to indicate a lot more people are seeing the question than should really need to.
The style of explanation is the problem.
You can try as much as you want to appeal to people's sense of rationality that it's nothing personal and they should take it as a signal to improve, but people will take them personal
taking the edge off that somehow is going to make a lot of SO's problems go away imo
@Catija well, I don't think if the OP's gonna feel hurt or unwelcome or whatever, he'd care if the post is at -4 or -5
They are, a problem to a degree, particularly when there are so many of them. If you have -4 or -8 or whatever, and the average score of a question on a site is 1 or 3 or something low like that, you're never going to fix the question enough to get it in the realm of positive.
8:59 PM
There is that too, @Shog9. Perhaps removing these posts faster will help with the perception that everyone hated them. On the other hand, it can also cause users to perceive some arbiter as being unjust towards them... and in practice this may actually be true given some broad interpretations of close reasons.
-2 does it

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