When viewing questions in the normal, "Interesting Questions" tab, (or any other view for that matter), the question's score is displayed to its left, and is labeled "votes".
But is it the correct word to use? Wouldn't "Score" be more appropriate (because a score of "1" doesn't necessarily mean "1 votes", it could mean "100 upvotes and 99 downvotes").
My suggestion, use "score"
Your thoughts?
Looking at what done for this question, https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions reports 4 votes, but the question actually got 6 votes: 5 up-votes, and 1 down-vote.
4 is really the score of the question: the difference between the number of up-votes, and the number of down-votes. Votes for me means the number of votes, not the score a post has.
Score should be an understood word, on Stack Exchange, as it is already used in the description of some badges, such as Convention ("10 posts with a score of 2 on meta"), or Disciplined ("Deleted own post with score of 3 or higher"). I would not say it is a word that Stack Exchange users don't see in other places on Stack Exchange.
score emphasize the gamification aspects of the system in a (possibly) undesirable way? I'm not convinced it's the right term to use here. (There's a reason why we use reputation instead of experience after all ;)
Commented
Nov 3, 2012 at 14:12
tally might be correct but is definitely not sexy enough). When I dig further I'm tempted to fall back to terms like decision or value, that do not have much in common with the sum of votes on a post, or at least not in our context.
Commented
Nov 3, 2012 at 14:54
This has been a long time coming, and we're not quite done yet! However I'd like to update you folks that we've just pushed some changes to wording all around the website regarding "votes".
Our main goal was to switch to "Score" where it made sense, which on this first pass meant:
Unfortunately these restrictions mean that question listings all around the website will remain unchanged for now. We are working to find better wording for "Score" that can also be used as a unit (e.g.: "points"), and on a plan to implement those with minimum negative impact to you.
As usual, thanks for reporting this issue, we appreciate the help! Ironing out inconsistencies that make the website more confusing and less welcoming is one of our priorities for this year.
Not only would this be a more accurate term, it would also avoid the famous pluralization bug! "1 Score" is just as proper as "2 Score", but "1 Votes" just looks terrible.
It's been pointed out that "score" is a bit confusing for new users, especially given that it already has a perfectly ordinary meaning that's not obviously out of scope. But the OP is correct that "votes" is not merely a bit confusing, but wrong and misleading in important ways. And "vote score" or similar, while neither misleading nor confusing, is too long to fit.
Instead of any of those, then, I suggest using "voting". This has the advantage of clearly tying back to concept of votes up or down, but without implying that it actually counts the total number of votes. Its meaning is deliberately skewed from the normal in an obvious way, so users unfamiliar with it, rather than being misled, will know that the site is using it in an idiosyncratic way, and will know to find out what the actual meaning is. A tooltip can then inform them efficiently that it's the sum of up and down votes.
In other words, treat it as a short caption for a figure ("for question quality, see fig 1-21, voting"), rather than an inline phrase ("24 votes", "Score 2").
vote score?scorealone. Not sure that would be the best word, but I can't think of an alternative that has voting semantics attached (perhaps someone on English can help...)score. Score, in general sense, means how much point or runs or goals i have did.... e.g. In cricket, if i say i scored 200 runs, it means i made 200 runs without taking into account of others. No plus or minus. The term should be change from votes butscoreisn't appropriate in my opinion.Net Voteswould work better? it's shorter than vote score (2 only characters longer than answers for sizing concerns), more accurate than just votes and avoids the gamification issue that people have with the word score.ratingbut it isn't a unit either.