Ask PG: Would you consider a "Make My Votes Visible" option?
3 comments
That's an interesting idea. As an immediate response, I think if I made my votes visible, then my upvotes would outnumber my downvotes even more than (I believe) they do now. If that reaction is general, and if participants buy in to making their votes visible in the first place, that could substantially increase the ratio of upvotes to downvotes. In turn, most users would be happier, as most seem to be more dismayed by themselves getting downvotes than by somebody else getting upvotes.
Your reason number 1 for doing this is also why I would hope that some regular participants here would disclose their votes.
Your reason number 1 for doing this is also why I would hope that some regular participants here would disclose their votes.
1) I'd like to see what people I respect are voting for, in the hopes of finding things I otherwise would have missed.
2) I'd like to someday make a recommendations system that would work for HN, and starting now to create a corpus of permission-cleared votes would help if I ever get to it.
3) I think it might have a positive effect on social dynamics. While there is in theory greater potential for retaliatory downvotes, I hope that instead people would act more considerately if they felt that others could review their behaviour. I don't see any way to test this other than by trying it out.
I think this option would best be a simple checkbox on each user's settings page: "Make my votes visible to others". The votes would then be visible from a link on that page for others to view. Ideally, it would also be possible to view these from an item-centric viewpoint, accessible from the 'link' page.
If the idea were to catch on, I'd eventually like to see an 'Open' list, parallel to 'Classic', whereby one could view the entire site as it would appear if ordered only by users with their votes set to be visible.
Thanks!