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1000 rep is required on meta to view vote count breakdown.

The reason given is that the query is expensive, and the high amount of rep required limits the number of queries.

Whilst this seems fairly reasonable on Stack Overflow, reputation is not generally gained as frequently on Meta. Further, since voting here is about agreeing/disagreeing with a proposal, it seems to be quite important to see whether people are generally with you or not.

This is in contrast to Stack Overflow proper, where voting has a subtly different meaning, and the absolute score (upvotes minus downvotes) is the more important figure.

I'd suggest that the amount of rep required to view vote count breakdown on meta should be far lower: perhaps 250?

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  • 2
    This answer was also previously given, but I still feel my rationale above is relevant: 1000 is a lot more on meta than it is on SO.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 14:37
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    There was also this proposal to at least allow it for users' own questions; it was declined without comment, despite overall support.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 14:42
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    The workaround (before you have the rep) is to look up the vote results on the poster's by-post reputation tab. I wonder how much that query costs.
    – Rick Sladkey
    Commented Jul 9, 2011 at 1:07
  • @Rick: Ah yes, that is useful in the meantime. (100% upvotes out of 37... niiice :P)
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 9, 2011 at 1:41
  • I know this isn't ideal but as far as I can tell, you should be able to determine the vote breakdown by looking at the question timeline. I guess you could consider it a workaround until then.
    – Jeff Mercado
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 8:02
  • All in favour of it - also worth noting that it is one of the only 2 privileges (with reduced ad) that is not an editing or moderation privilege.
    – assylias
    Commented Jun 29, 2012 at 14:20
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    (work-around) The Stack Exchange API offers this information alreadt. I've once written a script/extension which seamlessly integrates this feature: stackapps.com/q/3082/9699?view-vote-totals-without-1000-rep
    – Rob W
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 13:33
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    Does this answer your question? Make viewing deleted posts and vote counts more widely available on Meta SE, it was changed June 23, 2022 to 100 on MSE: meta.stackexchange.com/a/379767/282094 --- Look for this text: "On Meta Stack Exchange, the vote down privilege and the see vote counts privilege are awarded at 100 reputation.", here: meta.stackexchange.com/a/160292/282094
    – Rob
    Commented Oct 16, 2022 at 15:00

2 Answers 2

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If expensiveness is the only reason, then I think

  • The level could be lowered on meta, as there would never be as many queries about that on meta as on Stack Overflow. i.e. the "meta-version" of the query is not as expensive as the "Stack Overflow version"
  • The logic could be changed in order to render the two values in a JavaScript variable and display those at request instead of fetching them per-click with AJAX. If accuracy and real-time information is important, then there could still be a threshold of around 1 minute before an AJAX query is made.

I also agree that 1'000 meta points is very much and hard to achieve for normal users.

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  • 6
    Whilst I agree with lowering the limit for meta, 1000 rep on meta isn't that hard to achieve. It's largely a case of applying common sense and reflecting back the general feel of the community. I think you could argue that it's easier to get rep, because you don't need to know anything that you can't get from using the site, unlike SO.
    – forsvarir
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 8:03
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    @forsvarir: Be that as it may, the arbitrary SO user is not likely to rack up 1000 rep points before he/she becomes seriously interested in knowing vote counts. At the very least they are used to having access to this functionality on SO.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 9:01
  • @Lukas: The whole point of the AJAX is so that you don't have to calculate the votes for every answer if the user doesn't want to know them.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 9:02
  • @Tomalak: I don't know how SO/SE is built, but I'm guessing that the raw data contains upvotes and downvotes and renders them as an aggregated difference to the user? So maybe I don't understand the additional calculation effort...?
    – Lukas Eder
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 9:07
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    @Lukas: A more complex query is involved in pulling the separate upvotes and downvotes out of the database. That's why you have to explicitly click on a score and thus explicitly request the breakdown, to vastly reduce the number of times that it has to be done. A link to this reasoning is given in the body of this question.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 16:09
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Rep threshold was lowered to 100 in 2022 (on Meta)

The reputation threshold on Meta for viewing the vote distribution was lowered from 1000 to 100 in June 2022 as announced in Make viewing deleted posts and vote counts more widely available on Meta SE

The following post may also be worth reading Privilege page, tracker, and notifications still indicate that 1,000 reputation is required to see vote counts here, even though it was lowered to 100

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