Voting on Meta is not just for (dis)agreement. Update the help center to reflect this

Question

Voting on Meta is a bit of a two-headed beast. In addition to the regular meaning of votes as on other sites, the votes on Meta are sometimes also cast to express agreement or disagreement.

In the old FAQ the alternate meaning was explained using the qualifier "often". That is, voting on Meta is often used to express agreement/disagreement. I personally already thought that was a bit much, given that most of my votes were regular votes. Many times Meta questions show no prior research, are unclear or not useful. But well, I could live with that explanation.

In the new help center however it is stated that "Votes on meta are generally used to express agreement or disagreement with a particular idea, rather than indicating the quality of research or factual correctness of a post".

I personally think that's taking it slightly too far. Perhaps it's just me, but I'd like to the help-center to reflect that while voting works as it does on other sites, it does have an alternate meaning. And yes, that might happen regularly, but with the way it's phrased now it seems that all votes are cast in agreement/disagreement. And I don't think that's the case. We now have a situation in which all downvotes are explained away with a "ah, voting is different". And I often end up thinking "No it's not".

Perhaps the beginning of that section could be changed to something like:

Voting on Meta is sometimes different

While this is a meta site, we do appreciate a clearly formulated and well-researched question. As is the case on the main sites, questions which fall short in this regard might receive downvotes, while excellent questions might be upvoted.

Voting on Meta does sometimes have an alternative meaning however. They can be used to express agreement....etc.

Of course this is merely an example to get the point across. Thoughts? Perhaps you have an alternative formulation? Or am I completely off-base and are all votes merely cast in agreement/disagreement and should I get with the plan?

Answer 1

I've long held that voting on meta isn't all that different; while I don't expect changing the guidance to affect voting behavior very much, it would be nice to see fewer "don't worry, voting is different here" comments on poorly-written posts:

Telling someone who has just asked the 1011th question about q-bans or proposed private messaging or mandatory voting comments yet again that the down-votes are just because "voting is different here" is a cruel joke. Maybe you don't have time to teach them to write an effective argument, or draw a hand-drawn narwhal, or use search... But at very least, you don't have to drag a red herring across the trail on your way through.

We discussed this at length internally, and settled on the following wording for the "What is meta" help topic:

Like normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta allows members to vote on questions and answers. For most posts, votes reflect the perceived usefulness: well-written, well-reasoned, well-researched posts tend to get more attention and more upvotes. Highly-voted and frequently-linked posts may become part of the community-curated FAQ or codified as part of the site’s Help pages.

Unlike normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta invites the community to discuss, debate and propose changes to the way the community itself behaves, as well as how the software itself works. On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself.

For folks who do read help and vote accordingly, the intention is to focus agree/disagree voting on posts where there's actually something to disagree with: feature requests. For the even smaller handful of folks reading this: please try to limit down-votes on legit bug reports and support requests; it makes them harder to find, and often means we end up having to handle them via email - which effectively means we're spending less time on bugs or features you do feel are important. Save "disagree" votes for posts where there's actually something worth disagreeing with.

Answer 2

I agree with your disagreement with how the meta help center is presenting voting as mainly about (dis)agreement.

Here's my formulation (now with 35% less fat)

Voting is slightly different on meta.

In addition to the usual reasons^† such as indicating the quality of research or factual correctness of a post, votes on meta are also used to express agreement or disagreement with a particular idea. If you receive downvotes, it is possible that members of the community simply disagree with your proposed idea or your perspective on a particular issue. ...

I feel that the agreement/disagreement thing is more of an "in addition" thing – the usual rules on up-/down-voting still apply. Though admittedly most of the time it does seem that voting on meta has a lot to do with (dis)agreement.

^† _{It'd also be nice to have a somewhat official-looking guideline on non-meta voting (e.g. something that is posted on the help center) to serve as the link/reference for "usual reasons" in the formulation above (you know, the "clear and shows research effort", "plain awesome", "useful to others" stuff). Manishearth's post on the "When should I vote?" FAQ is nice, but it's somewhat lacking in authorithah due to the casualness of the tone.}