8

The closest I could come to an answer was in Why is there a daily *comment* vote limit for moderators?, but that one is very moderator centric. I'm wondering what the reasoning is behind the rule and what purpose it serves.

I understand many consider it an unnecessary tool, but when reviewing I feel it's useful to upvote accurate flagged duplicate comments as it may save future reviewers precious time.

Improve this question
4
  • 5
    To prevent users from upvoting every comment there is?
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Nov 9, 2016 at 19:01
  • 3
    @PatrickHofman I had to chuckle. I can't conceive of a bigger waste of time. Does the practice put too much strain on the servers or something? Or is it just an arbitrary line in the sand becaue "we've always done it that way"?
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Nov 9, 2016 at 19:03
  • 8
    @ElderGeek Just because you can't imagine wasting your time doing such a thing doesn't mean nobody will. Without voting limits on comments, voting becomes useless. The votes no longer mean anything. This is like asking why the government doesn't just print more money. The more you push into the system, the less valuable it is.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Nov 9, 2016 at 19:41
  • 2
    Related: The Complete Rate-Limiting Guide and Rate-limiting rationale
    – Mathieu Guindon
    Commented Nov 9, 2016 at 19:45

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
18

Because everything is rate-limited:

in our experience, anything that is not rate limited will be attacked and/or exploited -- only a matter of time. So we rate limit everything out of the box. – Jeff Atwood♦ Dec 8 '09 at 3:55

See rate-limiting rationale.

Improve this answer
4
  • 4
    This is correct. The community is generally entrusted to monitor and self-police specific content, but when it comes to broad, distributed activities, the core software is better at tracking those actions comprehensively. So when an individual uses a feature more than would be considered "normal" or "healthy", it is assumed the user is either using the feature wrong, or has some other activity/objective in mind... unless they can show/request otherwise.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Nov 9, 2016 at 19:59
  • 1
    I don't see how comment upvotes can be misused. Besides, when reviewing low quality posts, it's easy to reach the daily vote limit quite fast since there are a lot of comments on those posts saying things like "this is not an answer".
    – Donald Duck
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 16:14
  • I countered the reasoning cited in the answer in a comment. Also, that "everything is rate-limited" does not justify rate-limiting itself, this is circular reasoning.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 10, 2020 at 12:01
  • @RobertCartaino While what you said is true - the software may be better at tracking those actions - that doesn't necessarily lead to rate-limiting as the means of prevention. Also, who's to say what's "normal" or "healthy" for all users under all circumstances? And in my experience, in almost all cases where rate-limiting is applied, users are not given any straightforward way to show/request that they are using the feature correctly and that they have the proper objective in mind.
    – Andrew
    Commented Nov 10, 2020 at 12:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .