Replace vote locking with vote-reputation locking

Question

Stack Exchange has vote locking:

This feature should be removed. Instead, if an upvote is revoked enough time later, no reputation is changed (the poster keeps the reputation the upvote originally conferred and the voter keeps the penalty for any downvote given).

There isn't a very good explanation for why it exists: Why do votes get locked?. The best answer is to prevent tactical downvoting, but vote locking isn't an effective defense against this (permanently losing 1 reputation to gain the 10s of reputation from extra upvotes seems well worth it).

There seems to be a category of other problems, such revenge un-upvoting (where a user revokes their upvotes of a specific other user's posts) related to the change in reputation from revoking upvotes. This is why I suggest not having reputation change after a vote has stood for long enough. This would also help against tactical downvoting as the downvote becomes non-refundable after a certain amount of time.

Locked votes cause a number of other problems:

1. The world changes. An answer that was right five years ago may no longer be right today. I should be able to change my vote to a more current answer if I revisit the question.

2. It prevents people from changing their vote after working with an answer and seeing the full consequences of its proposed solution.

3. It works very poorly with the trending votes feature currently being A/B tested because it prevents you from asserting that your vote on a question is still current.

4. Comments to a post can change the meaning without an edit, but don't allow for changing of votes (only editing the post allows for it).

5. Locked votes likely causes extraneous edits to posts just so votes can be recast.

Note: in response to feedback, I have edited this proposal to include a provision for locking the reputation from votes.

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Note to moderators: I believe this question is sufficiently different from Can we get rid of locked votes or have a longer grace period? that question is more specifically about extending the grace period because you may discover that an answer is bad after working with it (point #2 above). This question is about a broader class of issue.

Answer 1

The world changes. An answer that was right 5 years ago may no longer be right today. I should be able to change my vote to a more current answer if I revisit the question.

The world changes. War History never changes. If a post was useful N years ago, it was useful N years ago, nothing is going to change that. Upvote is an atomic unit of usefulness on the Stack Exchange network, it does not just "go away" with time, and is not transferrable. Frankly, unupvoting a useful answer in favor of a newer one just because it is newer is borderline misuse of the voting system.

It prevents people from changing their vote after working with an answer and seeing the full consequences of its proposed solution.

The voting system is not a perfect one. In an ideal world, users should vote on an answer only after assessing all potential ramifications of relying on the solution provided. However, we do not live in a perfect world, but that is just an unfortunate circumstance. Leave a comment describing why the post turned out to be harmful, and future visitors, if they agree, will vote accordingly.

It works very poorly with the trending votes feature currently being A/B tested because it prevents you from asserting that your vote on a question is still current.

That is a valid concern, and should be provided as feedback on the post (which you actually did before this request, so thank you for doing the right thing). However, this is a reason to improve the trending sort feature, not a reason for getting rid of the vote lock.

Comments to a post can change the meaning without an edit, but don't allow for changing of votes (only editing the post allows for it).

Same issue as with realising the post was actually harmful a significant time later — we do not live in a perfect world. However, other users also see those comments and can vote on the post accordingly. That said, there might exist a solution of if we allow the lock to be lifted once if enough users mark it as such (but that is outside the scope of the proposal in question). You might also be interested in this and this discussions on allowing vote changes after new comments, there is some merit to it.

Locked votes likely causes extraneous edits to posts just so votes can be recast.

True, they sometimes do indeed (although it's been considered as a valid measure since times immemorial)), and that is probably the strongest argument towards doing something about the vote locking system, but it is still possible to address without removing the lock itself.