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A stray vote or two here and there doesn't really do much damage, and if someone found the answer to his question because somebody else already asked it, we want him to be able to upvote the question and perhaps some of the answers. SE has declined blanket restrictions on voting before, and I can understand that.

But I don't think you need a blanket restriction to solve the problem you describe here. The problem arises when a question is hot, or has just been Reddited, or gets tweeted by someone with a gazillion followers, and people swoop in and the ones with association bonuses vote. That seems to be the issue that really concerns people when talk of modifying voting comes up.

Some have proposed restricting voting on currently-hot questions, but that's problematic too (and I think was declined). The Hot Network Questions list is ever-changing and this would involve extra computation; further, does the problem really go away if it stopped being hot an hour ago, or yesterday, but you came across it anyway? It also doesn't help with other sources of publicity. No, what you want is for voting restrictions to depend on some durable property of the question.

Like protection.

Protection already restricts privileges that would otherwise be available: you can't answer a protected question unless you have at least 10 rep locally. It seems reasonable to me to extend the effects of protection to voting, at least on answers. (I actually think voting on questions is different; you don't need to be an expert to be able to say "I had this problem too". But that's a detail.)

If a community has protected a question, it's probably because the question has been getting unwanted attention in the form of junk answers. Drive-by upvotes (where drive-by downvotes are not possible) is unwanted attention that seems to cause a similar level of disruption to the community. This wouldn't be hard to explain to people; the "need 10 local rep to do something" concept is already there.

It then becomes the community's decision alone whether any given question should be restricted in this way. It doesn't depend on a hot-questions algorithm or any other automated process. The people affected by the behavior get to decide.

A stray vote or two here and there doesn't really do much damage, and if someone found the answer to his question because somebody else already asked it, we want him to be able to upvote the question and perhaps some of the answers. SE has declined blanket restrictions on voting before, and I can understand that.

But I don't think you need a blanket restriction to solve the problem you describe here. The problem arises when a question is hot, or has just been Reddited, or gets tweeted by someone with a gazillion followers, and people swoop in and the ones with association bonuses vote. That seems to be the issue that really concerns people when talk of modifying voting comes up.

Some have proposed restricting voting on currently-hot questions, but that's problematic too (and I think was declined). The Hot Network Questions list is ever-changing and this would involve extra computation; further, does the problem really go away if it stopped being hot an hour ago, or yesterday, but you came across it anyway? It also doesn't help with other sources of publicity. No, what you want is for voting restrictions to depend on some durable property of the question.

Like protection.

Protection already restricts privileges that would otherwise be available: you can't answer a protected question unless you have at least 10 rep locally. It seems reasonable to me to extend the effects of protection to voting, at least on answers. (I actually think voting on questions is different; you don't need to be an expert to be able to say "I had this problem too". But that's a detail.)

If a community has protected a question, it's probably because the question has been getting unwanted attention in the form of junk answers. Drive-by upvotes (where drive-by downvotes are not possible) is unwanted attention that seems to cause a similar level of disruption to the community. This wouldn't be hard to explain to people; the "need 10 local rep to do something" concept is already there.

It then becomes the community's decision alone whether any given question should be restricted in this way. It doesn't depend on a hot-questions algorithm or any other automated process. The people affected by the behavior get to decide.

A stray vote or two here and there doesn't really do much damage, and if someone found the answer to his question because somebody else already asked it, we want him to be able to upvote the question and perhaps some of the answers. SE has declined blanket restrictions on voting before, and I can understand that.

But I don't think you need a blanket restriction to solve the problem you describe here. The problem arises when a question is hot, or has just been Reddited, or gets tweeted by someone with a gazillion followers, and people swoop in and the ones with association bonuses vote. That seems to be the issue that really concerns people when talk of modifying voting comes up.

Some have proposed restricting voting on currently-hot questions, but that's problematic too (and I think was declined). The Hot Network Questions list is ever-changing and this would involve extra computation; further, does the problem really go away if it stopped being hot an hour ago, or yesterday, but you came across it anyway? It also doesn't help with other sources of publicity. No, what you want is for voting restrictions to depend on some durable property of the question.

Like protection.

Protection already restricts privileges that would otherwise be available: you can't answer a protected question unless you have at least 10 rep locally. It seems reasonable to me to extend the effects of protection to voting, at least on answers. (I actually think voting on questions is different; you don't need to be an expert to be able to say "I had this problem too". But that's a detail.)

If a community has protected a question, it's probably because the question has been getting unwanted attention in the form of junk answers. Drive-by upvotes (where drive-by downvotes are not possible) is unwanted attention that seems to cause a similar level of disruption to the community. This wouldn't be hard to explain to people; the "need 10 local rep to do something" concept is already there.

It then becomes the community's decision alone whether any given question should be restricted in this way. It doesn't depend on a hot-questions algorithm or any other automated process. The people affected by the behavior get to decide.

A stray vote or two here and there doesn't really do much damage, and if someone found the answer to his question because somebody else already asked it, we want him to be able to upvote the question and perhaps some of the answers. SE has declined blanket restrictions on voting before, and I can understand that.

But I don't think you need a blanket restriction to solve the problem you describe here. The problem arises when a question is hot, or has just been Reddited, or gets tweeted by someone with a gazillion followers, and people swoop in and the ones with association bonuses vote. That seems to be the issue that really concerns people when talk of modifying voting comes up.

Some have proposed restricting voting on currently-hot questions, but that's problematic too (and I think was declined). The Hot Network Questions list is ever-changing and this would involve extra computation; further, does the problem really go away if it stopped being hot an hour ago, or yesterday, but you came across it anyway? It also doesn't help with other sources of publicity. No, what you want is for voting restrictions to depend on some durable property of the question.

Like protection.

Protection already restricts privileges that would otherwise be available: you can't answer a protected question unless you have at least 10 rep locally. It seems reasonable to me to extend the effects of protection to voting, at least on answers. (I actually think voting on questions is different; you don't need to be an expert to be able to say "I had this problem too". But that's a detail.)

If a community has protected a question, it's probably because the question has been getting unwanted attention in the form of junk answers. Drive-by upvotes (where drive-by downvotes are not possible) is unwanted attention that seems to cause a similar level of disruption to the community. This wouldn't be hard to explain to people; the "need 10 local rep to do something" concept is already there.

It then becomes the community's decision alone whether any given question should be restricted in this way. It doesn't depend on a hot-questions algorithm or any other automated process. The people affected by the behavior get to decide.

A stray vote or two here and there doesn't really do much damage, and if someone found the answer to his question because somebody else already asked it, we want him to be able to upvote the question and perhaps some of the answers. SE has declined blanket restrictions on voting before, and I can understand that.

But I don't think you need a blanket restriction to solve the problem you describe here. The problem arises when a question is hot, or has just been Reddited, or gets tweeted by someone with a gazillion followers, and people swoop in and the ones with association bonuses vote. That seems to be the issue that really concerns people when talk of modifying voting comes up.

Some have proposed restricting voting on currently-hot questions, but that's problematic too (and I think was declined). The Hot Network Questions list is ever-changing and this would involve extra computation; further, does the problem really go away if it stopped being hot an hour ago, or yesterday, but you came across it anyway? It also doesn't help with other sources of publicity. No, what you want is for voting restrictions to depend on some durable property of the question.

Like protection.

Protection already restricts privileges that would otherwise be available: you can't answer a protected question unless you have at least 10 rep locally. It seems reasonable to me to extend the effects of protection to voting, at least on answers. (I actually think voting on questions is different; you don't need to be an expert to be able to say "I had this problem too". But that's a detail.)

If a community has protected a question, it's probably because the question has been getting unwanted attention in the form of junk answers. Drive-by upvotes (where drive-by downvotes are not possible) is unwanted attention that seems to cause a similar level of disruption to the community. This wouldn't be hard to explain to people; the "need 10 local rep to do something" concept is already there.

It then becomes the community's decision alone whether any given question should be restricted in this way. It doesn't depend on a hot-questions algorithm or any other automated process. The people affected by the behavior get to decide.

A stray vote or two here and there doesn't really do much damage, and if someone found the answer to his question because somebody else already asked it, we want him to be able to upvote the question and perhaps some of the answers. SE has declined blanket restrictions on voting before, and I can understand that.

But I don't think you need a blanket restriction to solve the problem you describe here. The problem arises when a question is hot, or has just been Reddited, or gets tweeted by someone with a gazillion followers, and people swoop in and the ones with association bonuses vote. That seems to be the issue that really concerns people when talk of modifying voting comes up.

Some have proposed restricting voting on currently-hot questions, but that's problematic too (and I think was declined). The Hot Network Questions list is ever-changing and this would involve extra computation; further, does the problem really go away if it stopped being hot an hour ago, or yesterday, but you came across it anyway? It also doesn't help with other sources of publicity. No, what you want is for voting restrictions to depend on some durable property of the question.

Like protection.

Protection already restricts privileges that would otherwise be available: you can't answer a protected question unless you have at least 10 rep locally. It seems reasonable to me to extend the effects of protection to voting, at least on answers. (I actually think voting on questions is different; you don't need to be an expert to be able to say "I had this problem too". But that's a detail.)

If a community has protected a question, it's probably because the question has been getting unwanted attention in the form of junk answers. Drive-by upvotes (where drive-by downvotes are not possible) is unwanted attention that seems to cause a similar level of disruption to the community. This wouldn't be hard to explain to people; the "need 10 local rep to do something" concept is already there.

It then becomes the community's decision alone whether any given question should be restricted in this way. It doesn't depend on a hot-questions algorithm or any other automated process. The people affected by the behavior get to decide.