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I know once you get a certain amount of reputation, you can see the total up and down votes for questions. Well, my proposal is to always be able to see this on your own questions and answers. You can see it by going to your user page anyway, so why not make it possible to do by simply clicking on the number of votes (like you can when you have the rep)?

11
  • 5
    It would take away the thrill of reaching 1000 rep! Feb 24, 2010 at 23:38
  • 44
    I would extend this request to include their own questions and their own answers. Feb 24, 2010 at 23:47
  • 1
    Maybe if I'm lucky by putting a bounty on it Jeff may come and say status-declined or status-planned.
    – Earlz
    Mar 22, 2010 at 17:59
  • 1
    Quick question, what possible gain do you get from seeing voting breakdown?
    – Yawus
    Jul 9, 2012 at 15:50
  • 2
    @Yawus: Would you like to know if your +2 question means you got only 2 upvotes versus 10 upvotes and 8 down votes? The former means you wrote a good, but boring question. The second means you wrote a popular, but controversial question.
    – Flimzy
    Jul 15, 2012 at 17:07
  • 1
    @Flimzy While you can infer from the reputation split in your history, I can now see how this might be useful. However, understanding controversy and popularity would be more suited for Meta and that you can infer from comments and answers.
    – Yawus
    Jul 15, 2012 at 17:52
  • 4
    @Yawus: The fact that that information can, indeed, be gleaned from ones own history is, in my opinion, all the more reason this feature request ought to be implemented. It's silly to make people jump through hoops for what can be so useful. And of course, the up/down vote count is not a substitute for discussing a question on meta, when appropriate.
    – Flimzy
    Jul 15, 2012 at 17:54
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    I would like to add to this request: Can we see up/down votes on answers to our questions as well? This is especially helpful when accepting an answer on a topic I'm not immensely familiar with--especially on the less technical sites (scifi/movies/religion/etc). I may not have the knowledge to say whether a particular answer is completely accurate. Viewing the up/down votes on an answer would allow me to judge the reception of the community when deciding whether to accept an answer.
    – Flimzy
    Jul 19, 2012 at 16:53
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    @DavidK Note that while a bounty is a great way to obtain community input on a question, they usually do not expedite a response from SE. As this has already been marked declined, you should post a reconsideration request: make a new question that specifically mentions this one, argue against the reason for declining it, and cite the top answer below as a new argument for implementing it. You can also look at this for more advice. May 9, 2019 at 22:24
  • @SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Thanks for the links! I knew I had read somewhere not to post a second question, since it will just be marked duplicate, but apparently i missed the part about not to bounty either. I'll post a re-consideration request later.
    – David K
    May 10, 2019 at 12:00
  • I have requested that this feature be reconsidered in this Meta post.
    – David K
    May 13, 2019 at 13:53

6 Answers 6

98
+200

That sounds reasonable. The author of a post has the most to gain from seeing the breakdown.

The rep limitation for requesting split votes is primarily to moderate the additional load on the server. If you let users view the vote breakdown on just their own posts (questions and answers), the additional load would be negligible.

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    So since Jeff's "no" answer was unpopular, and your "why not?" answer was very popular, and Jeff's word is no longer law, might this actually be implemented now?
    – nhinkle
    Jul 8, 2012 at 19:14
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    So it's been 9 years since this was originally declined by someone who is no longer an SE mod. Is it possible to get this implemented now?
    – David K
    May 9, 2019 at 16:13
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    @DavidK Make that 13 years. Implement pls Jeff? Jun 24, 2023 at 1:09
11

We already get complaints from people when they see one of their questions was downvoted with no comment explaining why.

Allowing new users who are not used to the system to immediately see that their post is getting downvotes even when it's overall positive will only amplify that effect.

Further, downvotes are relatively rare. It's certainly more interesting on meta to have this information, but on SO most users are content to upvote the good answers, leave the poor answers alone, and only downvote wrong answers.

Lastly, a downvote doesn't tell you anything. It could be a bad vote - and even if it was valid you're still at a loss as to why your post was considered bad enough to get a downvote. A lot of downvotes are probably improperly cast - as the recent up/down voting ratio limit is intended to help with.

  • How will having the vote split available to all users really going to improve SO in any measurable way?
  • What useful or actionable information does the vote split provide that the overall vote value does not provide?

It's only a "nice to have" or "navel gazing" feature, and one that would simply cause more complaints if given to everyone, even if restricted to their own posts. Yes, they can see that information now, but they have to look for it, and learn about the system to get there. With this feature it's easy to find (lots of people confused about it at first when they stumbled on it by missing the up or down vote button), and actually not intuitive. If someone intends to vote something up, thinks they hit the upvote button, and suddenly gets the split view it's only going to confuse them, especially as a new user.

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    Seeing that your question has a vote count of +8/-6 is a lot more valuable than seeing that your question has +2. It tells you that your question is controversial, and not necessarily a good question. As @RobertCartaino said in his answer, the OP has the most to gain from this information.
    – Flimzy
    Jul 8, 2012 at 19:25
10

This is now possible. See here:

VoteCounts: bookmarklet to display up/down votes even for rep less than 1000

2
0

It was decided a reputation requirement was needed for performance reasons, as showing the individual votes requires a query in the votes table (counting them) instead of just fetching the score field in the post's entry.

Now I personally think this is ridiculous; such a query would require a fraction of the time needed to perform all the operations of - for example - a single, uncached page view. And users with less than 1,000 rep can view pages, can't they?

3
  • I was of the understanding that SO denormalized the vote counts...
    – waiwai933
    Feb 25, 2010 at 2:07
  • @waiwai: it keeps a field in the post table, score, that is the one displayed (upvotes + downvotes). The individual number of upvotes and downvotes is in the votes table. Feb 25, 2010 at 2:14
  • 1
    If that's what's causing the performance issue, what's keeping them from adding separate up/down totals to the post table? The votes have to be totaled for the combined result anyway.
    – RobH
    Jul 9, 2012 at 16:22
-2

why not make it possible to do by simply clicking on the number of votes(like you can when you have the rep)?

It was actually arbitrarily placed as a bonus for 1k rep to make the long slog to 2k seem a little more pleasant since there's a stepping stone in the middle.

Since it's really part of the game, I doubt that's going to change. You can see the up/down for all questions in the data dump, or if you are impatient go to the user's page for the person that posted it and check out their reputation graph for upvotes and downvotes in that post.

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    The user would still gain new abilities at 1K... lifting the limitation of seeing only their own posts (i.e. see vote split on all posts). Feb 24, 2010 at 23:51
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    You can vote to close/open your own questions at 250 rep and you can edit your own posts at 1 rep. Does that make the long slog to 10k seem less pleasant because the 2k/3k bonuses are less powerful?
    – mmyers
    Feb 25, 2010 at 16:19
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    @Rob @mmyers - I suspect that the majority of the usage of this feature is already for people to look at their own scores. So yes, making it available for one's own scores earlier does significantly lessen the value of the 1k transition. Regardless, it's just a part of the game. As far as I can tell it just makes navel-gazing easier, so why not make people work for it? How does having this feature improve stackoverflow?
    – Pollyanna
    Feb 25, 2010 at 19:33
  • I'm not sure about the premise that we simply need something to happen at 1K (may or may not be true, I don't know). That seems arbitrary to me. Most rep-limited features are withheld to allow users to gain enough experience to use them properly... except this. I don't have a strong personal feeling about it either way. I was under the assumption the 1K limitation was a server-load issue (see my post). "How does this feature improve SO" is pretty much whatever argument you make as to why it is available in the first place... only now extended to another small group where it is "needed." Feb 25, 2010 at 19:57
  • @Robert - So we can conclude that there's no good reason for it at any level? Once we conclude that there's no reason to have it, then it's just eye candy or navel gazing, which can be simply used as a minor feature one can gain at an arbitrary level. Given that, explain again how SO will benefit if the arbitrary level is moved down from 1k.
    – Pollyanna
    Mar 22, 2010 at 1:50
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    @Pollyanna - I don't conclude that "there's no good reason for it." It was my feature request (meta.stackexchange.com/questions/747/…). If I had my magic wand, I'd just make it available to everybody. I was questioning whether "we need something to happen at 1K" is the actual reason the rep limitation is in place. Mar 22, 2010 at 3:23
-40

I still think it's an ability you should earn.

(at least to do it the easy point and click way)

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    So you have to earn the ability to have information you already have presented nice to you? You might as well earn the ability to use formatting shortcuts in the editor instead of typing tags. Aug 18, 2010 at 22:57
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    I still think marking feature requests as "status-declined" is an ability you should earn.
    – user271002
    May 14, 2019 at 16:39

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