Should the weight of downvotes be increased?When we started Stack Overflow, we wanted to make sure that downvotes were more of a visual and psychological motivator than a punitive action. That's why
However, recently, I've seen Marc Gravell and Jon Skeet both say similar things:
IMO, downvotes don't quite carry enough... -5 downvotes and +1 upvote (for sympathy) yields zero points overall; or it could even yield +10 points for a new user! I'd prefer to see, say, -4 points? -5 points?
I am starting to come around to this way of thinking. There are some users who ask a lot of questions that get downvoted heavily, but over time these users end up with a fairly sizable amount of reputation.
This doesn't feel right.
We are considering changing downvotes to -5, with the same -1 cost to the casting voter.
There really aren't that many downvotes in the system, so the net effect of this change would be to reduce rep growth for users who tend to get downvoted as much as they get upvoted. (Yes, I realize this is no panacea: over time, we'll still get rep inflation for marginal users based on sheer quantity; this is only one of several changes we are considering to help mitigate this.)
The other downside to this change, besides the obvious minor loss of rep for most users, is that it would force a global reputation recalc for every user. I think we're due for one of those anyway..
Yes, definitely -5 for a down-vote for the down-votee, but then I would also "up" the cost to -2 for the down-voter.
The higher cost will reduce the "just feels like it" down-vote behaviour some people are displaying.
I think -1 cost for -5 downvote is too low. It should be -2 or if it stays -1 it should be -3 or -4 (maybe).
Additionally, I think points lost by downvoting should be returned if the post or answer in question is deleted.
If the argument for downvoting costing rep is to improve the quality of questions and answers on the site then perhaps we should incentivize people to delete downvoted content (of theirs) by returning any rep lost to them. I think this will happen with a rep recalc anyway but those are infrequent.
Lastly, if the "downvotee" edits the question so you can change your vote, if this happens on a different day I don't think the daily rep calc properly works with this. This should be corrected.
As you are increasing the penalty of a down-vote I think you ought to strengthen the "nudge" that prompts people to explain the down-vote.
For example, perhaps in this case the cost to the down-voter should be increased to -2 unless they provide a (possibly anonymous) comment, in which case it's -1 or even 0.
EDIT As Jon Skeet suggested in his comment a way to avoid the "afsdrwi" type comment would only to refund the rep if a certain number (2, 5?) of people voted the comment as useful.
I know you've implemented the "have you considered an explanation" to the down-vote button for lower rep users, but with the greater cost you might need a greater nudge.
I don't know - this really feels wrong some how. Even at -2 we already have a lot of people complaining about getting downvoted. -5 would make that much worse.
A subtler change that would have almost the same effect is just don't award rep points for upvotes to questions or answers with a negative score at the time of the vote. If the complaint is that some users are slowly accumulating a lot of rep as a result of "pity voting", than just target the pity votes rather than all votes.
Unfortunately, it seems like the new -5/-2 change is already decided :(
As an aside, I was opposed to changing this at all in the past because it looked like a solution in search of a problem. So a few users gain a little extra rep score. So what?
If they're using SO that much they've still invested something of themselves in the site and therefore still earned a certain amount of trust. Beyond that point is doesn't matter; rep is just a toy. Trying to make rep meaningful beyond that is ultimately futile. Who cares if they're gaming the system? Providing good answers is still a much faster way to earn rep, and so they're never going to pass any of the big contributors.
There might be some concern these users don't really understand the system, and so will abuse the abilities they gain from higher rep. But if they don't even care enough to post thoughtful content to their own questions, they're unlikely to use these powers much if at all.
I've recently realized this view was wrong. On one hand, I'm saying these users have "invested something of themselves in the site." On the other, I acknowledge they "don't even care enough to post thoughtful content to their own questions." So which is it? Well, both. They do care. But their actions demonstrate that they don't care as much as I thought, or care about things that don't align with the site's values. Therefore they have not really demonstrated that they've earned any trust, and something should be done to correct this. Whether or not they would actually abuse the trust or use it all, even correctly, isn't really relevant until they actually earn it.
Have you considered making the penalty for downvotes of a question different that for the downvotes of an answer? I'm not sure about it (it needs more thought), but it bears consideration.
I mentioned the inverse of this problem in a Uservoice request a while back.
Penalties for downvoting users with < 25 reputation (or some other amount) should not induce any rep penalty on the downvoter. Why? There is no incentive to downvote users who post spam/off-topic/useless questions when they won't lose any reputation for it - but the downvoter will.
Also, I completely disagree with changing the penalty from -1 to -2 ex-post-facto and then applying it to previous votes. As an example, Rich B [1] would lose almost 30% of his rep just from the extra -1 penalty on downvotes given from that recalculation, which is not fair. This doesn't even account for the -2 to -5 jump for downvotes against him, which I'm sure there are many :)
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/users/5640/rich-bI just had a look at my stats and the effect of this change would be really small for me. I stand to lose maybe 100 rep.
I think its interesting to look at the list of people who lose most out of this (restricting to people with less than 10k rep) people with more really should not care:
select top 100 UserId, UserName, (t.DownVotes * -4) + (u.DownVotes * -1) as Loss1, t.DownVotes * -4 as Loss2, u.Reputation from UserTotals t
join Users u on t.UserId = u.Id
where u.Reputation < 10000
order by Loss2 asc
Results (people most impacted from the change - -5 instead of -1 for a downvote):
Rich B [1] -1156 7773 Mastermind [2] -944 6542 theman_on_vista [3] -568 670 Thomas Hansen [4] -552 2430 Joan Venge [5] -540 4844 mgb [6] -468 9772 unknown [7] -452 918 Masi [8] -448 4193 Paul Nathan [9] -444 5653 mP [10] -440 1606 Unkwntech [11] -440 8838 Malfist [12] -420 3332 Bombe [13] -412 8322 Click Upvote [14] -412 5683 mson [15] -396 2773 StingyJack [16] -392 4907 GateKiller [17] -388 7190 warren [18] -388 6602 Kirsh [19] -340 3235 Bill K [20] -336 9121 Kevin [21] -332 2795 David Arno [22] -324 5905 ck [23] -320 6869 Grauenwolf [24] -320 4016 Filip Ekberg [25] -316 3935 Justice [26] -312 7653 Shore [27] -312 1500 BCS [28] -308 6844 Jon Harrop [29] -304 1342 Teifion [30] -304 7439 unknown [31] -304 4590 samoz [32] -304 5816 Joshua [33] -300 2509 Gold [34] -300 1056 Claudiu [35] -300 8830 Johanna [36] -300 638 DannySmurf [37] -296 6650 TraumaPony [38] -296 4192 Cody Brocious [39] -292 8965 dacracot [40] -288 3991 Alex Fort [41] -288 5676 tim [42] -288 8798 Rob Cooper [43] -284 9021 Thanks [44] -284 4350 David Dorward [45] -280 8342 Javier [46] -280 9524 gs [47] -280 7802 CodeToGlory [48] -276 2885 gbjbaanb [49] -276 8978 Ben Hoffstein [50] -276 7138 Esteban Araya [51] -272 4793 DrPizza [52] -272 4342 acidzombie24 [53] -272 4359 Jason Punyon [54] -272 6670 Ali A [55] -268 7412 Luca Matteis [56] -268 4468 workmad3 [57] -264 6243 Geo [58] -260 5079 SpliFF [59] -260 4337 SilentGhost [60] -252 7726 jrockway [61] -248 6781 Blankman [62] -248 4546 Joshxtothe4 [63] -248 911 mattlant [64] -248 4414 BobbyShaftoe [65] -248 9724 David W. Fenton [66] -244 2468 hasen j [67] -244 6373 Dev er dev [68] -244 4831 Rob Wells [69] -240 9495 Daniel A. White [70] -240 6145 shahkalpesh [71] -240 5147 Chris Ballance [72] -236 7509 Unknown [73] -236 8945 MarkusQ [74] -236 8882 Brad Wilson [75] -232 8417 Rich Bradshaw [76] -232 5318 Robert S. [77] -232 9875 Diodeus [78] -228 6360 KM [79] -228 4843 lomaxx [80] -228 9666 EBGreen [81] -228 6827 strager [82] -228 9242 troelskn [83] -228 7736 Sir Psycho [84] -224 1193 17 of 26 [85] -224 7972 Skizz [86] -224 6272 unknown [87] -224 695 Will Dean [88] -220 7464 Nathan Campos [89] -220 746 LFSR Consulting [90] -220 7074 Jian Lin [91] -220 4016 R. Bemrose [92] -216 8240 Mike Stone [93] -216 9750 bpapa [94] -216 2974 Spencer Ruport [95] -216 8374 Dillie-O [96] -216 8139 raj [97] -216 5790 Omar Abid [98] -212 842 Charles Bretana [99] -212 7565 James Anderson [100] -212 2868
People most affected if the change is an extra -1 for a downvote and -5 for being downvoted.
Rich B [101] -3398 7773 David Dorward [102] -996 8342 Mastermind [103] -988 6542 Unkwntech [104] -859 8838 Click Upvote [105] -850 5683 DJ [106] -822 4910 hop [107] -809 3473 Joan Venge [108] -756 4844 Rob [109] -703 8979 Brian Knoblauch [110] -667 4004 Bombe [111] -660 8322 Rob Cooper [112] -652 9021 Juan Manuel [113] -624 5192 jrockway [114] -624 6781 TheSoftwareJedi [115] -617 6218 LFSR Consulting [116] -609 7074 Robert S. [117] -600 9875 Paul Nathan [118] -600 5653 GateKiller [119] -589 7190 hasen j [120] -582 6373 gbjbaanb [121] -580 8978 Cody Brocious [122] -577 8965 Malfist [123] -575 3332 SilentGhost [124] -570 7726 theman_on_vista [125] -568 670 Thomas Hansen [126] -561 2430 rp [127] -549 4776 StingyJack [128] -537 4907 warren [129] -513 6602 Grauenwolf [130] -512 4016 Suma [131] -508 3590 mP [132] -506 1606 DannySmurf [133] -499 6650 Outlaw Programmer [134] -499 3820 starblue [135] -495 7913 Masi [136] -490 4193 David Arno [137] -483 5905 mgb [138] -482 9772 tim [139] -479 8798 Will Dean [140] -470 7464 Jason Punyon [141] -469 6670 mson [142] -462 2773 unknown [143] -457 918 David W. Fenton [144] -456 2468 Alex Fort [145] -450 5676 bdukes [146] -445 8246 Ed Swangren [147] -443 5628 bzlm [148] -442 1515 Samuel [149] -438 6273 Stu Thompson [150] -436 4212 gs [151] -436 7802 Josh Stodola [152] -427 3955 Jon Harrop [153] -422 1342 Kevin [154] -420 2795 TraumaPony [155] -418 4192 Bill K [156] -413 9121 Apocalisp [157] -410 4848 Jason Bunting [158] -405 7121 EBGreen [159] -404 6827 Filip Ekberg [160] -403 3935 Kirsh [161] -394 3235 Graeme Perrow [162] -392 6515 Sklivvz [163] -392 6722 Jimmy [164] -390 8532 Kristopher Johnson [165] -389 7058 stepancheg [166] -389 550 J-P [167] -389 4867 Geo [168] -386 5079 Software Monkey [169] -383 7697 mausch [170] -381 6271 Justice [171] -375 7653 01 [172] -374 2571 samoz [173] -371 5816 Chris Ballance [174] -370 7509 blowdart [175] -369 6120 porneL [176] -364 5767 superjoe30 [177] -364 2701 DrPizza [178] -363 4342 BCS [179] -361 6844 Rob Wells [180] -358 9495 Greg Dean [181] -353 4573 Esteban Araya [182] -350 4793 lomaxx [183] -350 9666 Ngu Soon Hui [184] -348 4187 dacracot [185] -345 3991 lothar [186] -345 5577 Pesto [187] -344 6185 ck [188] -341 6869 Patrick [189] -339 4852 unknown [190] -339 4590 JohnFx [191] -338 4428 x-x [192] -337 3626 recursive [193] -337 5151 Dan [194] -335 698 Javier [195] -334 9524 strager [196] -334 9242 Ben Hoffstein [197] -332 7138 mattlant [198] -332 4414 tloach [199] -328 3981 Svante [200] -328 6437
Observations:
ACCEPTED]
Having had a few months to think about this, I'm no longer sure it's a good idea, for two reasons.
Downvotes were always essentially cosmetic, with an extremely minor effect on reputation. Despite this, received downvotes are taken quite seriously by users. Almost too seriously. If we raise them to -5 they are no longer cosmetic but can be wielded as cudgels on other users. This was never the intent of a downvote, so we would be twisting it into something ugly. Users are far, far more attached to their reputation scores than I ever could have predicted, and I believe more than doubling the weight of a downvote will cause a lot of new, additional angst in the community over the occasional received downvote -- to the point that only users who want to hurt other users will cast them. Downvotes go from being cosmetic and psychological to weapons of war.
If we amplify the effect of a downvote, in all fairness, we must also amplify the cost to the casting voter as well. So what was -2 to the post, with -1 to the casting voter, will become -5/-2 or even -5/-3. The only reason we had downvotes cost -1 was to make people really think about using downvotes in moderation, only when appropriate. For such an extremely minor cost, users with 20k+ rep are still hesitant to cast downvotes for fear of losing reputation! Our goal is not to prevent people from casting downvotes, and it seems that given the current observed behavior (that is, very few people cast downvotes -- though a tiny select few cast a lot) we would be causing the majority of users to cast even fewer downvotes than they do now. This is, in my mind, a HUGE downside to this proposed change. We would be effectively nerfing downvotes into oblivion because they're now twice as "expensive" to cast.
The real problem I want to solve here is "shore, there is always gold" [1]. I am no longer convinced this is the right way to do it, but I am open to hearing ideas on that thread on other ways we could do it.
[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1326/please-charge-rep-for-questions-after-threshold-5 sounds like a nice balance between the "completely equal" -10 (which is a bit of a nuclear option) and the "pretty puny" -2 current option.
I'm not sure about the cost of -1. When I say "not sure" I really mean that - it's not that I think it's wrong, but I have very little idea of what will happen. When people see that their downvotes have more influence on rep but cost the same, will they downvote more to feel the power? Will they save downvotes for genuinely incorrect/unhelpful answers? I have no idea, and I suspect no-one else does either. It may be worth implementing it and saying that the voting cost is "under consideration" or something similar. (Everyone else seems to have been coming up with the same suggestion of -2, which seems reasonable to me.)
I do have one very specific concern: Rich B may be hit very hard by this, as he tends to stir things up and have inappropriate "punishment" downvotes cast against him, I believe... and he downvotes a lot too. (I may not always agree with his idea of what's downvote-worthy, but I suspect he always thinks before downvoting and doesn't do so for purely personal reasons.) In many ways it feels wrong to bring up a specific user, and I know Rich is controversial anyway, but I for one wouldn't want him to lose edit rights due to this. I'm not suggesting any special treatment here - just raising it as a concern.
This is one of the most upvoted requests, but it's still only status-planned (it's been that way for close to half a year now). Why not implement the change on Meta first? Seeing how it goes down here would give you a way to gauge the potential reaction of users on the other sites. The community is smaller, but it's the most active and vocal part of it.
After that you can then work out how the whole thing works in real-time. And there's nothing better than data you can really crunch. It's science!
Maybe with that, include an annual rep recalc, maybe twice a year even, to keep the numbers closer to being accurate. You can dress it up as an end of year present/stocktake sale.
I would only change the value of the UpVote to only +2 when the Question/Answer is below zero.
Examples:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| Downvotes | Upvotes | Rep (New system) | Rep (Today system) |
-------------------------------------------------------------------
3 2 -2 14
1 3 20 28
4 4 0 32
This way the poster do not gain any rep unless there are more people thinking that the post is right than the people who think is wrong.
So here's the problem with changing the reputation.
You want people to post on the site, even if they are not totally right. It should be ok to make mistakes and have other people correct you etc. If you get down voted a couple of points for making a mistake, that should be ok. It's a learning process. Should people be punished for making a mistake, maybe a little as a way of saying, "Hey, you made a mistake, please try and fix this." By making it higher, really what you are starting to tell the community is, "Don't be stupid, don't make mistakes about what you are posting, and don't waste our time." (wow sounds a lot like usenet). In the past, the tenet of the site was always been to be able to ask any question no matter how simple. If I remember back to the first podcasts it was always about people not having to RTFM. People need to be able to post mistakes to learn.
The point of the "game" (site) is to get people to participate and play. If people are mightily punished for trying, the immediate response is going to be to not use the site which will ultimately cause it's demise. The scoring system shouldn't be targeted towards the upper posters on the site, it should be focused on keeping the average programmer interested and coming back. The people who maybe kind of often get down votes, and try and post useful information and get some up votes too. Right now, you need only one up vote for every five people who think you made a mistake. Losing points does a lot more to someone's ego (that's what the points boost) than gaining points. Most programmers aren't experts at what they program, but they try. The reward vs. punishment factor directly affects how much they are willing to try (the greater the punishment, the less they will). There are what 9 million programmers, but there are only 400 people with a 10k + rep. Does there really need to be a greater gap between the top posters and people who ask a lot of questions to try and learn?
The amount of points lost by the recalculation isn't really that important in the big scope. It's about the person who maybe logs onto the site and asks a question or posts and answer and quickly realizes that the community suggests that "non-experts need not apply" and goes away to pay 10 dollars a month to get his questions answered elsewhere, because at least he doesn't feel dumb there. To be successful, these are the people the site needs to focus on retaining. The site is kind of like Communism, to work it has to benefit the masses.
So... when is this coming?
Is there some worry this will generate unwanted behavior somehow and that's why it's being postponed?
I believe that instead of changing the weights of down-votes an alternative solution could used for the reputation.
Basically instead of using every vote on the question/answer for the reputation the "vote balance" could be used.
For example if user has 4 questions:
Vote balance up-votes down-votes reputation earned
Q1: 1 1 0 +10
Q2: -1 0 1 -2
Q3: 1 3 2 +24 (+30 -4)
Q4: -1 3 4 +22 (+30 -8)
I believe that the fact that Q1 earned +10 reputation and Q2 -2 is not an issue for anyone. The problematic ones are Q3 and especially Q4.
So instead of counting each up-vote/down-vote for the reputation, we could consider the overall vote balance of a question. That would eliminate the problem the Q3 and Q4 created in the current setup.
The same situation would look as follows
Vote balance up-votes down-votes reputation earned
Q1: 1 1 0 +10
Q2: -1 0 1 -2
Q3: 1 3 2 +10
Q4: -1 3 4 -2
It think that would be more fair than changing the weight of the down-votes.
See also Earning Reputation for Poor Questions [1]
[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/35763/earning-reputation-for-poor-questionsI agree with the idea of increasing the weight of downvotes. If that goes in, I would also like to see a way to let the downvoters be made aware that the post has been updated to reflect their input. If on my 'Recent Activity' page I was alerted to modifications to answers that I downvoted, I would have the opportunity to go back, review and maybe even un-downvote if I thought the answerer redeemed him/herself.
I think the downvote mechanism should encourage useful feedback.
So how about the voter gets -3 when they downvote unless they either:
If they did either of these things the voter would only get -1 rep.
This would encourage useful feedback on downvotes. It might also discourage downvoting where the reason for the downvote is trivial.
I know that the one thing that I always want to know when I get voted down is why?
I always thought you chose the 5:1 ratio on purpose. Psychological studies show that we are impacted far greater by negative things than positive ones. I've heard that marriage councilors often say the magic ratio is 5 positive things for every one negative thing. I know I definitely feel down votes more than up votes and as such I thought the ratio was perfect.
Disagree. I've always voted with the understanding that it hurts only a little. I've never felt bad about down-voting something I just didn't feel I liked. Increasing the penalty would discourage me from down-voting at all.
I have wanted to down-vote something twice in a row though, and found I can't. Considering I pay for each down-vote, I felt that I should be able to say: this is really bad. So, there'd be 1 down-vote = -2:-1 and 2 down-votes = -4:-2. You could limit it there, or let people keep going.
Now I tend to vote without regard to the cost to myself really, it's something I forget about until after the "this is not worth reading" feeling has passed and my vote is cast. Then I notice, oh yeah, I lose a little for down-votes. That might have to be made more obvious if you're increasing the cost, or changing the limit.
Definitely the rep-recalc is something of a "yikes" that could really leave people feeling stung. So that's one big reason not to do it.
TBH, I'd rather prefer to see the -1 on downvotes go, maybe also only for people with more than X reputation. That could encourage a lot more people (incl. me) to actually use the feature, because at the moment I feel like I'm getting punished for trying to keep low quality answers/questions down, which is why I rarely ever downvote something. (and yes, it's just one small tiny friggin point and I have plenty, but still, it feels like a punishment against me or asking me to "pay" for something that has no value to me)
I think it shouldn't make a difference how many down votes and how many up votes there were, but that number on the side. If I get up voted 3 times, and down voted once, there would be a 2 on the left in between the arrows that let you vote up or down. It should get considered as 2 up votes, so 20 reputation, not 3 up votes (30 rep) minus 1 downvote (2 rep lost). So I think if the number is positive, it should be num × 10 reputation gained, if the number is positive, num × 4 lost (or maybe 5). The so basically a down vote in the positive area makes you lose 10 points, but you just gained those points so I think its fair.
Overall, I think this is a good idea. -2 for a down vote in the grand scheme of things really is not a big deal and by increasing the down votes to -5, there begins to be a little bit of pain.
Just curious, of all of the down votes in the system, how many of those down votes were cast in the same thread as the down voter had a submission? n other words, what percentage of the down votes were cast by someone who also had an egg in the basket? I ask because I've seen a few more "tactical" down votes occurring where it was obvious that the down votes happening due to some competition for the highest position in the thread.
If I were to answer a question and then have a few other folks come in and answer similarly, they could actually inflict some harm on my reputation score while lobbying for position...
Maybe the cost for a down vote should not be refunded in this situations? Should the down vote cost increase to 2 points?
Some users end up down voting an answer simply because they don't like the advice given by the answerer. Adding more weight would probably make these people think twice before doing so.
I think a downvote on a question should be -5 and downvote on an answer should stay -2.
If the goal is to prevent people gaming the downvote system by asking lots of silly questions with the hope of sympathy votes, you can just adjust the points just for question asking.
I'd also like to see downvotes on answers scale like this
1 -2
2 -2
3 -3
4 -3
5 -4
6 -5
So starting with the 6th downvote, each downvote is -5
Some effort [1] has already been put into encouraging feedback with the down vote. Could this be an opportunity? Perhaps a system where "Anynomous" down votes count the old way, but if you want to "be on record" then your down-vote counts more.
[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votesWhy not make upvotes and downvotes a sliding scale instead of fixed amounts?
I am a moderator over at gamedev.net and they use a similar sliding scale system for user rating. If the voter has a much higher ranking than the user he is voting for then the vote can have a large positive or negative effect. If the difference is small or about the same then the effect of the vote only small. If the difference is negative (a user with a low rating upvoting or downvoting a high ranked user) then the difference could become almost negligable.
Such a system has several side effects.
There is a big downside though:
What about some form of dynamically adjusting system, where people that are downvoted more are cheaper to downvote, as they are more likely to be trolls, and conversely, those that downvote a lot find it increasingly expensive to downvote?
Note I don't propose an exact solution - it is far too tricky!! :)
It really is a question of finding a dynamic balance between upvote, downvote, downvote-cost. There's an implicit upvote cost by way of limited votes per day.
It's an interesting dynamic, and one could evaluate more dynamic approaches than just assigning certain weights.
What opinion does one have of people that have a 1:1 ratio of up and down votes? Rather than consider whether they are independently minded, free spirited, against the conservatism of the middle - maybe one might consider whether they are more likely to be acting in an antisocial manner?
Whatever carrot/stick alteration you make to the system will change the nature of the equilibrium. This is because there are advantages to tactically downvoting people.
It is pleasant to design a community website like this that rewards and reinforces positive social behaviour and by neglect implicitly suppresses the antisocial. Reddit does very well in this regard also.
On that website and this one, downvotes are sometimes more important in the role they play in suppressing unpleasantness, it generally gets pushed to the bottom of the page or disappears behind a "click to expand" tag.
The big problem with downvoting however is the perverse reward, in that it pushes your answer to the fore.
Maybe there is an argument to say that people that have answered a question cannot downvote competing answers on that question.
I think part of the problem is that the effect of voting is +10/-2, but the number next to the question/answer is +1/-1. Say an answer gets 2 upvotes and 5 downvotes, they've gained 10 rep, but it their question/answer is at -3, so it's unlikely anyone else will vote it down unless it's trolling. Don't really know how you'd tackle that short of subtracting .2 for each downvote and then rounding.
I like the idea of increasing the effect of down votes to -5. (Also I'm for increasing the cost to -2).
As an alternative suggestion; How about the rep received for an answer (or question) is calculated from final score rather than from each down and up vote. (I'm not sure about this, just an idea I'm throwing out there)
Let me explain by example:
An answer that gets 4 up votes and 1 down vote current will get +40 & -2 rep, so +38 rep overall. If instead you calculate from the finishing score which in this case is +4-1=3 so the rep given overall is +30.
The reverse situation: An answer that gets 6 down votes and 2 up votes (for sympathy maybe). currently will get -12 + 20 so +8 overall. This seems rather wrong, the answer is clearly bad, so why are they getting positive rep. If we calculate from final score, that's -6+2 = -4 final score. Which gives rep of -8.
This way, down votes to an already up voted question have the effect of removing a full 10 rep. However up votes to an already down voted question only have the effect of returning 2 rep.
What do people think?
If you are doing this, please have a test phase, lets say a week, before finalizing.
There could be several schemas implemented, but I'd to express my idea:
Downvoted loses -2, downvoter looses -1 by default (same as now). If the downvoter feels, that's not enough, he could offer 2, 4, 6 or 8 rep of his own, and the system subtracts the half of it from the downvoted, e.g:
I downvote somebody (-1) and offer 6 additional rep (-6) for an extra. The target receives -2-3 = -5 rep.
Its a bit more complex to implement, I admit. Unfortunately, I can't prove any of its properties.
Sliding Scale Based on Voting Record
I'd like to see some kind of sliding scale that would reduce the weight of people who are super downvoters (Just IMHO, I give less weight to the people that seem to downvote a lot - YMMV of course!).
Some scale like
2-ln(1.3*dn/(up+dn))
gives a range with a nice long tail, but the exact parameters can be tuned as desired.
95% 5
75% 3
50% 2
5% 2
If you were to do this I would increase the cost of casting the downvote to -3 (not -2, you increasing the downvote score by 5 after all) and make people explain. Some downvotes are simply vindictive and you'll be making those more effective.
I think if there are a lot of downvotes AND upvotes then that tends to indicate that it is a religious or other contentious issue. Why penalize them overall for particular questions?
I think it is a serious mistake to keep the -1 for the down voter.
Leaving it with -1 only makes it MORE enticing to do "strategic" downvoting or retribution voting.
If you're going to ding someone for 5 hitpoints then it should probably cost you a little too.
One of the reasons why there may be so many downvotes (there are pile-ons - it would be interesting to see the statistics on downvotes) is that they are essentially "free". Maybe the problem really is that it is too easy to cast downvotes.
Just let users with large amounts of reputation down-vote for free. Also you could limit the amount of free down votes for these users (maybe 10-20 per day). This way users who have proven themselves over time will get a tiny bit closer to being moderators.
I think that the penalty for downvotes should be less when the downvoter leaves a comment. Maybe -2 without comment and -1 with a comment.
As I (just now) mentioned on this thread [1], I think the weight of a downvote should increase non-linearly, the way that upvotes are now - only instead of starting out high and getting lower, it should start out low and get higher!
[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1326/please-charge-rep-for-questions-after-threshold/37191#37191Don't increase the penalty-points per downvote. Instead consider using one of the following:
2 downvotes received one after the other causes the weight of the penalty-points carried by the 2nd downvote to increment by say +1 (i.e. 3) and so forth. This increment gets reset to 0 whenever an upvote is received.
After 9 (total, not consecutive) downvotes are received then the following downvotes would each carry an incremented weight of say +10 (or whatever) penalty-points, which will again be incremented by +10 on reaching 100 downvotes and so forth
This could also be applied to serial downvoters. The more they downvote (either consecutively or in total or a combination thereof), the heavier the penalty-points.
You may also have to keep in mind the total points each user already possesses, as it would really hurt newcomers to be hit by a tsunami of downvoters. Maybe a little red pop-up box could remind them that when they withdrew their answer/response, the weight of the negative points would be withdrawn as well. This way they can keep the answer up until they get sufficient explanation via comments as to why their answer was considered incorrect or inappropriate. Then they can defend their answer, or edit their answer to clear up any misunderstandings, or just delete it (and put in a new answer).
The proposed change might roughen the pleasant atmosphere I associate with Stackoverflow. So here's my 3 cents against increasing the penalty:
It's good to know what's wrong is as well as what's right. An increased penalty will cause more wrong answers to be removed, along with the comments explaining why it's a wrong answer.
Some answers are controversial. They are not wrong, or unhelpful, but they still get a lot of downvotes. Increasing the penalty would discourage people from expressing what they really think.
Quality of information is ensured by a negative feedback loop [1]:
Negative feedbacks tend to dampen or buffer changes; this tends to hold a system to some equilibrium state making it more stable.
By increasing the penalty, the constant in the feedback loop changes from 0.2 (one upvote = 5 downvotes) to 0.5 (one upvote = 2 downvotes.) This 150% increase will remove the "feedback" nature of downvotes. Downvotes will be a smack in the face rather than a gentle push in the right direction.
People will be very upset if you lower their reputation retroactively. It's like saying "a penalty kick is now worth 7.5 instead of 3 points" and reordering the rankings at the end of the Rugby year.
Rather than going through and majorly dropping all question points by half, why not just make upvotes on answers equal +15 or something? Then no one loses any abilities they've worked for.
Allow multiple down votes by the same user at a cost to both parties of 1 point to a maximum of 10 down votes. It should always hurt to punish even when punishing the people who deserve a lot of punishment.
Why not increase the downvote value according to the user's rep?
ie, Joe N00b joins and starts downvoting everywhere - it'll be carnage. However, if his downvotes don't count much (-1 if that) then it'll be fine; If Jon Skeet decides you've gone too far (or answered incorrectly) then your rep penalty from his downvote should count more. He's an obviously more responsible user who would only downvote (hopefully) for things that really needed it.
So if the downvote penalty ranged between 0 and -10, a user with 2000 rep might cost you 2 points, a user with 10,000 rep might cost you -5 points.
An eye for an eye...
If a downvote inflicts -5 hit rep points, it should cost 5 mana rep points.
"Take that. Hah!"comment would simply tell me that some idiot (no offence) down-voted me for no good reason. - If you can't explain why you are down-voting, you probably shouldn't be doing it. - Atli