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I recently got a warning just after having upvoted an answer. It said something about the fact that I haven't voted on a question for a long time and that questions need votes too.

The problem is that it disappeared so fast that the first time I could not read it at all. Well, ok, to be honest I could probably read the 2-3 first words :-) but not more.

Could not this message stay a little longer on the page?

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  • 11
    At my first time, I retracted my vote, and voted again to read the message, because I saw a relation between voting and that message.
    – Rob W
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 14:12
  • 3
    Never seen this warning before... I guess you should vote more on questions :)
    – Lix
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 14:13
  • 8
    Dear sirs, Please nag me harder. I mean, longer.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 14:33
  • @Lix Probably, indeed :-)
    – nIcO
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 14:34
  • @AdamDavis Oh yeees, oh yees, pleeease !!! :-D
    – nIcO
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 14:36
  • What browser / version? I don't remember having a problem with it disappearing quickly (I usually use IE9 on Win7).
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:21
  • 3
    @jadarnel27 - IE?? but whyyy? :(
    – Lix
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:25
  • 3
    Question title should read "warning does not disappear fast enough."
    – Anthony Pegram
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:31
  • Related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113862/…
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:32
  • 2
    Couldn't find any documentation saying for how long the "you haven’t voted on questions in a while; questions need votes too" message appears, but since it will appear for every vote you make on answer guess they made it auto disappear to not anger people too much. Anyway, that's not a bug as far as I can tell.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:36
  • 4
    I use Firefox 10. After reading all the comments, I don't know if it should appear, not appear at all, appear sometimes, etc. but what is sure, is that if the message appears, it should be visible long enough to be read, otherwise it is quite confusing.
    – nIcO
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 16:03
  • 2
    It seems to be using a widget intended for very short messages with one word or two. With a message as long as this, the fade time is too short.
    – iStrindhaug
    Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 13:07
  • 3
    Regardless of any suggestions on how to approve the reminder, what is the point of a notification, if most users cannot read it, because it disappears too fast? Either keep and improve it (suggestions have been made) or remove it altogether.
    – user1438038
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 11:33
  • 4
    More than 5 years later, still the same issue.
    – Cœur
    Commented Jun 9, 2017 at 4:29
  • 1
    I couldn't catch the whole message cuz of its evanescence quickly! So, I only google You haven't voted for a question for a long time to get the message and am redirected here :)
    – Soner from The Ottoman Empire
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 20:02

2 Answers 2

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I think it's odd that the notification disappears on its own at all. The purpose of this popup is to encourage people to vote for questions (which is an important aspect of the system, and has been addressed multiple times by the SE team).

Why not just make it dismissable by the user (like many of the other div-notifications in the system)?

Proposed solution to the bug:

Click to dismiss
Note: jQuery not necessarily included. Some assembly required.

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  • 3
    What is this jQuery you speak of?
    – Lix
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:49
  • 1
    @Lix Blasphemy!
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:50
  • Please don't make me click twice for every upvote. I know you are trying to push, er, "encourage" voting on questions, but is it so important a goal as to make it hurt?
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:53
  • ooh, I have to down vote this, and say so since I know you're man enough to take it ;) I think the warning is explicitly meant not to be so intrusive. I vote on questions a lot myself, and I occasionally get the warning.
    – Andrew Barber
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:54
  • @AdamDavis It's pretty important to the "economy" of SO, I think. I think it should be a little painful, and it's not too tough to relieve that pain (vote on a couple questions). I do appreciate your point though. Hmm.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:57
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    @AndrewBarber "explicitly meant not to be so intrusive" - if it is by-design, then that's alright. I just think that if question-voting important, maybe the popup should be a little irksome =) Oh, and no worries about the downvote - that's the system working! I wasn't incredibly confident this would be the most popular idea.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 15:59
  • If it appears for every vote, the simply compromise is to include a dismiss box the first time it shows up in a given browser session, but make it auto-dismiss thereafter.
    – Ben Lee
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 17:24
  • 1
    Make it appear at the top of the entire site like Wikipedia asking you to donate does :) Give the user the power to dismiss it (for like 6 months) and that way it doesn't have to disappear so fast. It's not even about voting for answers anyways, so it doesn't make much sense to make it appear as a consequence of voting on an answer. It's about your overall behavior on SE, so it should be a notification from the website itself.
    – Pluto
    Commented Jun 5, 2014 at 19:27
  • The message disappears far too quick. I thought it was telling me I was doing something wrong. Eventually I went to a message to capture when I upvoted, then read the captured image. Even when reading it, it didn't make full sense to me. I thought it was telling me I wasn't voting enough on the threads (Questions/Answers). I understand how clear the message (separation between question and answer) is to the veterans. But it wasn't clear to me until I performed a Google search and read this thread. Many people will have problems with the research needed to read and decipher the mesg.
    – L. D. James
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 14:10
1

The message comes up for a few seconds - it is meant to be transient - to dismiss itself and simply be a gentle reminder.

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  • 8
    The transient nature makes sense but I had the same problem as the poster in that it was too quick. There wasn't enough time to actually read the entire message.
    – wwomack
    Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 15:25
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    The speed at which it dismiss itself, we can almost say it's a subliminal message.
    – Loïc Faure-Lacroix
    Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 8:34

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