Don't lock votes on Meta sites

Question

When I talk about Meta here, I mean any meta but this one.

I understand the Idea behind “Your vote is now locked in unless this answer is edited”. However, I don't think this reason applies to meta sites and have some reasons why I think votes on meta sites shouldn't get locked:

Opinions change:
I thought a feature-request was just stupid and I downvoted it. Later on, after reading the answers, I saw the ideas behind it (which weren't included in the question), and wanted to upvote it - but I couldn't. Of course, the question was written badly, but ...

Votes on meta work in a different way,
as they indicate (dis)agreement instead of usefulness. So in my example, the question wasn't really useful as-is, but I did agree, after hearing the ideas behind it.

You don't get reputation on Meta,
so there is no reason to tactically downvote¹.

So,

What would you say of disabling the lock-vote feature on meta sites?

And no,
There is no problem with users who go bumping posts by up- and downvoting all the time (as suggested in the comments) since votes don't bump - thanks Hugo and cpast.

Some very clear examples of when you want this

• Moderator pro tempore elections - what if a nominated user does something stupid and you want to remove your upvote? Nope, too late.

• Feature-requests can get more useful after a new feature implemented (e.g. when there's a request for changing the footer that you downvoted, and then the team changes the footer in such a way that you want to upvote it instead)

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^{1: as Shog9♦ points out, there still is a reason to tactically downvote: when you've answered a question yourself as well, then downvote the other answers to get your answer shown higher. I don't think this is a real problem with this feature-request, but a problem we have now too and will probably always have.}

Answer 1

This should be implemented. Sometimes your opinion changes on a question after seeing the comments/answers or just after going away (outside? is that real? Wow the new cry engine is sooo realistic!) and re-thinking about it.

We should not be obliged to wait for an edit to be able to change our voice. Meta is about making the things going on and part of this is being able to express ourselves properly without having to hack an edit to make a vote change.

It happened to me today, where I found a question, that I had downvoted some time ago. After seeing some new answers and comments (which gave more precision) or after realizing that that feature was needed while doing stuff on the network, it made me realize that this could (and should) be implemented, and that it would be a great idea. But the meta did not see the situation in the same way!

Votes are locked after the first 5 minutes.

Sadly, I guess, I am obliged to stay against that idea then... Unless, someone edits that post AND that I stumble on the post again (AND realize it has been edited) AND change my vote.

That's a whole lot of things that have to happen in order for me to be able to change my vote!

I'm not saying that votes on meta should be ephemeral or always changing, but you should be able to change your opinion if someone brings up new facts and ideas in answers or comments, without someone editing the question.

Answer 2

This question has 120 upvotes and is two years old. There's only one reply by SE staff, Shog9, and it's not really an answer to the feature request.

Here's where this is most important. If you've been participating on a meta site for several years, the site policy sometimes changes. Never mind my own opinion, the entire site has since superseded an old policy from 2011 with a new policy from 2014. I should be allowed to change my vote on that old 2011 post without having to edit it. It's confusing to new users when they see an old post with tons of upvotes supporting something that I just told them was not allowed. And if that's not enough, we all have the right to change our minds about any topic, for any reason, and hence vote and re-vote accordingly.

I discovered an additional area where it is necessary to let me change my vote: The nomination phase of an election. We had an election on a site recently and I changed my mind about my vote on two candidates nomination. So I edited the posts just to change my vote. And I reserve the right to change my vote anytime for any reason, so I don't want to hear any crap like "you should have thought about it more before voting".

Let's push this through already, or at least get a proper response from the SE staff.

Answer 3

You don't get reputation on Meta, so there is no reason to tactically downvote.

I don't feel strongly one way or the other about this suggestion, but I do want to dispute this particular assertion...

Folks might vote tactically on Meta for the same reason they'd speak tactfully with their local politicians: you want to influence how the place is run. Particularly on smaller metas, where a half-dozen voters might be all you can expect, getting your answer ranked a little better can make your ideas seem that much more popular...

The advantages would tend to be fairly limited - but then, I've never found tactical voting on questions that aren't watercooler nonsense particularly useful either. If the compiler sez you're wrong, down-voting competing answers doesn't help you much.

Answer 4

At 150 upvotes, and almost 4 years old, it is disappointing to see no response to this feature request. It seems obvious that users want this feature. The changes should be implemented, or at least, we should be given an adequate explanation on why it should not be (one that does not simply reflect the Stack Overflow team disagreeing with all of the users that have cared to upvote this question and the corresponding answers).

What about rage-quitters? Well.. we should be handling that pretty well, anyway..

Note that secondary meta sites do not have reputation. As a result, the user reputation issues brought up in the post linked to as a 'reason not to' by Shog9 is a non-event. If a user deletes their profile, remove all of their meta votes, regardless of reputation. There are two reasons we should already be doing this: 1. As mentioned, there is no reputation at stake, so there is no unnecessary penalty to other users. 2. If that user is no longer a member of that community, I would humbly suggest they no longer have a say in meta. Their votes, positive or negative, should be removed to reflect the fact that that user is no longer a part of that community.

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It could be said that we don't really know if everyone that voted for this still agrees. That is one of the points we are trying to raise. We want to know what people think now; not 2-4 years ago.

I have run into issues, recently, where a new answer posted to a question I asked in meta convinced me of issues concerning another answer, which I had previously upvoted. On some sites, meta participation¹ is almost non-existant. This appears to be the case on GameDev. As such, it would be beneficial to be able to retract or reverse my votes based off a change of opinion.

It has been said that we should be sure of our opinion, but this does not address the fact that as human beings, we are entitle to change our opinion. You can spend a long time in personal contemplation, only to have your view changed through the better explanation of another point of view.

_{¹ We get high views, but nobody ever votes to actually participate.}

Answer 5

We should encourage users to think through their opinions carefully before voting.

• If a user receives more information that changes her opinion, then she should edit the answer to include new information, or post the new information as a new answer.
• If her opinion changes because another answer is better, then more often that one is deserving of an upvote, and while she may "agree" with the original answer - well, this is only partly about whether you agree, it's about whether the answer was good enough to make you agree.
• If her opinion changes for no reason whatsoever, then what's to stop it for changing for no reason whatsoever again? She should gain more information before locking in a vote, and get in the habit of not voting when it's still highly likely for this to happen.

Anyway, the bottom line point I am making is that it is good to think of a quality answer as one that brings people to agree with it, and bad to measure just by whether you agree with the basic opinion. Of course viewpoints become entrenched and periodically we take votes. But the quality of posts on all meta's is drastically increased by the idea that quality answers bring people to agree with them and build consensus, and this should be espoused.

Ultimately, we went with the SE approach to host meta.SO as well because at the end of the day, our discussions are more productive when they are not driven by flippant opinions, but driven by well-formulated, high-quality, persuasive answers and arguments. And this forum teaches its users that opinions may be formulated soundly and from reason and facts, that really shouldn't change unless the reasons or facts do. This makes meta awesome and we should continue encouraging it.