70

I realized the other day on SciFi & Fantasy SE that the upvote message is misleading. I had joined and asked a question, this one if you were wondering, and tried to upvote an answer.

It gave me a message saying that my upvotes would not be shown until I had 15 rep.

15 rep notice

Okay, I understand that. Same with downvotes. It makes sense not to allow voting privileges immediately.

But when I had ≥15 rep and could now upvote, I realized it didn't actually upvote the answer. I understand that too, but I don't think it should tell me it was hidden when it didn't exist.

I propose we change the <15 rep upvote message to something less misleading.

For example:

You need ≥15 rep to upvote answers/question/comments

Just something less misleading.

I understand that the attempted vote is tracked, I wish to change the message to say that.

Note: I am asking to change that tooltip, not questioning what it does.

Can a SE unicorn please help with this?

UPDATE: The tooltip has been changed. See here.

Improve this question
8
  • 2
    Though wait, it's not really a dupe. I've asked why, and this is asking to change the tooltip. different things.
    – nicael
    Commented Dec 25, 2015 at 22:27
  • 3
    So, just related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/259583/…
    – nicael
    Commented Dec 25, 2015 at 22:28
  • Given the related question, you should probably amend your suggestion to clarify instead that, while the upvote does count for something, it's not going to do anything more than it already did.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Dec 25, 2015 at 22:32
  • Why does the tooltip say 125 reputation?
    – Anthony Pham
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 0:05
  • @pyt downvote probably
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 0:17
  • @PatrickHofman thanks for the image, I changed it to an upvote to make it more clear though.
    – user311528
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 15:50
  • No problem. I just copied it from the other post to make it clear for future viewers.
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 15:59
  • Don't forget to self-accept your answer
    – Stevoisiak
    Commented Jun 11, 2017 at 13:14

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
38
+100

Indeed. The current message is very misleading and actually wrong. It makes you think the votes will be automatically applied, which they aren't.

To keep the 'we do something with your feedback' part of the message, my counterproposal is:

Thanks for your feedback! You need ≥15 rep to upvote posts. We will remember your vote for analysis. Once you have earned enough reputation you can vote on this post again.

It makes clear that the vote casted doesn't do more than just get stored for analysis (through SEDE as Shog9 explained in the linked post).

Improve this answer
11
  • 3
    I think that message isn't really concise enough.
    – The Guy with The Hat
    Commented Dec 25, 2015 at 23:56
  • I can agree on that. How would you shorten it and still make clear what their vote actually did?
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 0:02
  • 1
    Tried to remove some content. Hope it is better now @the
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 0:16
  • The problem is that there's a delicate balance between informationality and conciseness. Personally, I think the best would be a very concise message with link to further explanation.
    – The Guy with The Hat
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 1:59
  • I sympathize with the intent, but I'm not sure that explicitly calling it a vote makes this less misleading, particularly since there's currently no easily-obtainable record of these "votes" the way there is for real votes (consider that a user with 20 rep would be able to find all of the posts he'd upvoted in his profile, but would see anything "downvoted" suspiciously absent in spite of the claims that they are remembered). I suspect it'll be hard to avoid problems in a terse message without actually changing what anon feedback does...
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 20:52
  • Okay. Got that @shog9. Why is the feedback / vote message even shown? What was the reason for that?
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 20:57
  • As a way to make the basic mechanics of the system - earn rep to vote - a bit more discoverable.
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 26, 2015 at 21:25
  • I accepted your answer, but I will change the accepted answer when the tooltip is changed and they post that here.
    – user311528
    Commented Dec 28, 2015 at 22:01
  • :/ looks like 100 more rep incoming
    – user311528
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 16:58
  • Sorry I can't help it. I would love to fix it myself...
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 17:55
  • 2
    You proposal was accepted
    – John Militer
    Commented Jan 12, 2017 at 20:16
13
+50

Like how Patrick Hofman said, the message is very misleading and makes you think that your vote was counted after all. In fact, the vote doesn't show on the post but is taken into analysis. Actually, let's use that for the message.

The message:

Thank you for your feedback! You need ≥15 rep for your votes to count on posts, but your feedback will be kept for analysis instead.

will do three things:

  • Be short, simple and straight to-the-point

  • Mentions that you need ≥15 rep to upvote

  • Also mentions that the "vote" will be taken as feedback (as mentioned in first sentence in message) and will be sent and kept for analysis

In the meanwhile, this should be .

Improve this answer
7
  • This is good, but what I am looking for is a status-accepted tag and have it fixed by SE.
    – user311528
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 2:30
  • And sorry, but this is exactly what I didn't want, the your vote to appear message. It isn't a vote at all, and it won't appear because it doesn't exist!
    – user311528
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 2:33
  • Well it is a vote, just one that doesn't appear on the post's vote count
    – Anthony Pham
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 2:34
  • 1
    No, that is the problem. It isn't. It is tracked, but doesn't count for anything.
    – user311528
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 2:35
  • There... maybe changing vote to feedback will work this time
    – Anthony Pham
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 2:38
  • Yes! Exactly that.
    – user311528
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 2:38
  • You got the bounty. Still, I want a status-completed.
    – user311528
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 20:02
12
+100

This has been updated.

The new message:

Thanks for the feedback! Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score.

image name here pls

Improve this answer
3
  • 2
    Just a heads up - I'm undeleting this answer. The difference between the old message and new is subtle but important - the new version says that the publicly displayed score is not changed even if you eventually have more than 15 reputation.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 10, 2017 at 19:13
  • 1
    @AdamLear it's subtle, a bit too subtle IMHO, but I guess I see it.
    – user311528
    Commented Jun 10, 2017 at 22:58
  • 1
    I still think that this message is misleading. I have fallen into this trap. I put a lot of effort into choosing which posts to upvote on multiple SE sites where I had <15 reps and was recently surprised and annoyed to see on the TeX-LaTeX SE that they did not appear when I reached at least 15 reps there. I think the message should say "(...) but will never change the publicly displayed score." or "(...) are recorded for moderators' information only and (...)". A user with low reputation, like I, doesn't suspect that this "recording" is for something he doesn't and will never care about.
    – geras
    Commented May 10, 2019 at 12:56

You must log in to answer this question.