tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Voting for yourself!?)

François G. Dorais comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3257)

François G. Dorais — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:30:21 -0800

Thanks Anton. I posted the request on meta.SE.

Harry Gindi comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3255)

Harry Gindi — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:34:49 -0800

Anton, you have more rep there than you do here haha.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3254)

Anton Geraschenko — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:32:55 -0800

@fgdorais: Ah, I see. Transferring ownership to the community user actually sounds like a decent way to do what you're trying to do. The problem is that community wiki mode is a bit of a monster feature. Rather than being used to make posts more easily editable and more collaborative (as the name would imply), it is more often used as a way to prevent people from gaining reputation for things that don't really deserve reputation. As a result, people probably usually want to keep some sense of ownership of the post. For example, they probably want it to show up in the list of answers in their profile. So I feel like your proposal would make more people unhappy than it would satisfy. In any case, if you really want this feature request to be implemented, you should post it on meta.SE since it would have to be implemented by the SE team.

François G. Dorais comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3252)

François G. Dorais — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:56:01 -0800

@Tom: It's a feature request. A better way to phrase the request would be "the ability to vote for any CW." The ethical issue is implicit and I'm ambivalent on it.

@Jonas: It's not a question of effect. One more potential vote per CW wouldn't change a whole lot. It's a question of principles. I upvote and downvote for specific reasons, there are instances where I would want to do one or the other on a CW that I started for those same reasons.

@Anton: I don't see any real complication for users, it's pretty much invisible. I don't know anything about MO gears, but this could be done by automatic transfer of ownership to a formal community user, or something like that.

By the way, this is based on a recent experience where I was considering whether another user's contribution to my CW deserved an upvote. I clicked just to see if I could, I couldn't and that was fine. However, I then realized that other CW contributor probably could if he was so inclined. That felt a little uneven.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3249)

Anton Geraschenko — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:11:16 -0800

I agree with Jonas, except I don't think the sort order will be affected since all CW posts will just have score of one more. I don't really see the value gained to justify the complication of the voting system.

Jonas Meyer comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3246)

Jonas Meyer — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:32:03 -0800

No, you can't vote up or down on your own posts. I think allowing it, even for CW, would be too likely to invite abuse. Even though there is no point gain, the upvotes affect the sort order and how likely others are to pay attention to the answer.

Tom Leinster comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3245)

Tom Leinster — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:24:29 -0800

Does the software allow you to vote for yourself? I've never tried. François, are you asking for this to be made possible, or raising it as an ethical question?

François G. Dorais comments on "Voting for yourself!?" (3229)

François G. Dorais — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:07:22 -0800

I'm not entirely sure this is a great idea, but I can think of some cases where you would legitimately want to vote for your own community wiki. In particular, when the community wiki is a truly collaborative work, I think it's desirable to vote for a good team effort. It's a little unfair that later contributors can do this but not the original community wiki creator. It's a little fishy to vote for yourself, but I see little risk for abuse since there is no point gain.