I assume voting was implemented in the way it is currently in order to ensure posts weren’t up and downvoted simply based on their headline. This was sound rationale, but I believe it has not succeeded in practice.
This was the rationale, so I’m curious why you don’t believe it has succeeded in practice.
TL;DR: It is super rare to read to the end of anything online, and many people get value and can make judgments based on partial reads.
I should have added more logic there.
I believe it is often both practical and useful to vote on an article before reading the whole thing. For example, I already strongly believed I’d upvote Sean’s announcement upon reading the headline… it’s a big deal, and to me, clearly positive. Depending on my time availability, I may have wanted to upvote it then, and not read his announcement at all. This would have had what I believe would have been positive signaling and feedback effects, as it is still an informed decision of support, based on the context I have knowing him, his work, and the needs in the space.
If I had more time, I may have chosen to read some, and as I scanned the article, I may have been satisfied upon seeing that the funding will create 10 new postdoc positions in X-risk. I would have both satisfied my curiosity and been confident in the knowledge that this is awesome and I want to give positive feedback. At this point, it is more practical as a forum reader to scroll up, as that is where the links are that allow me to navigate back to the main page of the forum. To scroll down just to vote requires familiarity, recall, and particular passion of the reader.
I’ll add that web analytics support that these ways of reading occur at high frequency. For example, on Slate, 50% of readership exits around the 50% mark: http://slate.me/1XNNRi8
Certainly not all, but a majority of these readers get some meaning from having visited the page, and if the content was not interesting enough for them to continue scrolling and reading, or if they feel positively about the article but get the majority of the value early on, they have feelings that are meaningful and, I believe, should be allowed to be easily expressed.
You don’t have to actually read the entire article. It is perfectly fine it you decide to upvote an article after the first paragraph or two. If it is high quality, I would suspect that enough people will upvote the article that the one person who can’t be bothered clicking on it doesn’t matter. Furthermore, if it isn’t worth your time to click and scroll to upvote, then upvoting that article can’t be particularly important.
Indeed. I would expect that the current placement makes the most sense because you can vote as soon as you’ve finished reading the article rather than having to scroll back to the top.
This was the rationale, so I’m curious why you don’t believe it has succeeded in practice.
TL;DR: It is super rare to read to the end of anything online, and many people get value and can make judgments based on partial reads.
I should have added more logic there.
I believe it is often both practical and useful to vote on an article before reading the whole thing. For example, I already strongly believed I’d upvote Sean’s announcement upon reading the headline… it’s a big deal, and to me, clearly positive. Depending on my time availability, I may have wanted to upvote it then, and not read his announcement at all. This would have had what I believe would have been positive signaling and feedback effects, as it is still an informed decision of support, based on the context I have knowing him, his work, and the needs in the space.
If I had more time, I may have chosen to read some, and as I scanned the article, I may have been satisfied upon seeing that the funding will create 10 new postdoc positions in X-risk. I would have both satisfied my curiosity and been confident in the knowledge that this is awesome and I want to give positive feedback. At this point, it is more practical as a forum reader to scroll up, as that is where the links are that allow me to navigate back to the main page of the forum. To scroll down just to vote requires familiarity, recall, and particular passion of the reader.
I’ll add that web analytics support that these ways of reading occur at high frequency. For example, on Slate, 50% of readership exits around the 50% mark: http://slate.me/1XNNRi8
Certainly not all, but a majority of these readers get some meaning from having visited the page, and if the content was not interesting enough for them to continue scrolling and reading, or if they feel positively about the article but get the majority of the value early on, they have feelings that are meaningful and, I believe, should be allowed to be easily expressed.
Also, I suck at formatting on this forum. Sorry for the huge TL;DR.
It made for a great partial read though, enough for me to upvote the comment
You don’t have to actually read the entire article. It is perfectly fine it you decide to upvote an article after the first paragraph or two. If it is high quality, I would suspect that enough people will upvote the article that the one person who can’t be bothered clicking on it doesn’t matter. Furthermore, if it isn’t worth your time to click and scroll to upvote, then upvoting that article can’t be particularly important.
Indeed. I would expect that the current placement makes the most sense because you can vote as soon as you’ve finished reading the article rather than having to scroll back to the top.
I now commented on this as a direct response to Peter.
Thanks for the heads up.