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Is there a way to encourage a continued/long-term voting?

This is similar to the question How to encourage voting on questions, which subsequently lead to the creation of the Electorate badge. This badge indeed encouraged me to do more voting, so I appreciate this badge and think it was effective.

But for this and all other Moderation badges, I think what is missing are badges that represent (and be an incentive for) continued active level of voting participation. Current badges (not including the 1 vote badges & sportmanship), with total #s awarded are:

  • Suffrage - Used 30 votes in a day 17.5k (bronze)
  • Vox Populi - Used the maximum 40 votes in a day 8.7k (bronze)
  • Civic Duty - Voted 300 or more times 28.6k (silver)
  • Electorate - Voted on 600 questions and 25% or more of total votes are on questions 4.8k (gold)

Perhaps something like silver and gold versions of Suffrage and/or Vox Populi that represent hitting that badge requirement a certain number of times, similar to the Mortarboard, Epic, and Legendary badge progression. Or even a version that is for "X number of votes in a week" progression.

Are there any trends that show that after the current badges are attained, that voting levels decline?

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    If you got all those badges and still don't vote regulary because of the posts then I doubt there will come any good from introducing long-term-vote badges.
    – juergen d
    Jan 31, 2014 at 19:23

1 Answer 1

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People voting because they want to get a badge, rather than because they have an opinion on the quality of a post that they would genuinely like to share with the community, are people that should be voting less, not more.

Adding additional incentives to vote just for the sake of voting will at best do nothing, and at worst result in uninformed votes that result in content with a score that doesn't reflect the communities true value of that content.

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  • Then why have any vote badges? This seems like "it's OK to do once but not continue doing it." But I agree, I wouldn't want to introduce something to encourage bad voting, but something for continued participation.
    – MikeSmithDev
    Jan 31, 2014 at 19:27
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    @MikeSmithDev Personally I think they encourage it more than they should. A minimal level of encouragement is useful to expose people to features they may not be familiar with, and encourage enough use for them to be able to use the feature adequately. The bronze badges related to voting help to accomplish that goal. Beyond that, my guess is someone created badges just for the sake of creating badges, not because they thought that the site would be a better place because they exist.
    – Servy
    Jan 31, 2014 at 19:30
  • Would you think then this could lead to problems similar to the review badges, where it seems some people rush through and do bad reviews (seemingly to get badges)?
    – MikeSmithDev
    Jan 31, 2014 at 19:41
  • @MikeSmithDev Yes, that is exactly my point. However, due to the nature of voting anonymity, and the fact that there is no way to empirically state that a vote is "wrong", let alone who's vote it is, there is no way of knowing to what degree this is a problem, unlike reviews which are both not anonymous and have a demonstrably correct/incorrect response (at least in many cases, even if some situations are debatable).
    – Servy
    Jan 31, 2014 at 19:43
  • Good points... wasn't thinking about it from that perspective. I guess this would probably lead to more negatives than positives or good participation.
    – MikeSmithDev
    Jan 31, 2014 at 19:45

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