Why not reward blind voting?

Question

"Independent" expert opinions are always more valuable than consented ones. Would your scientific article be more trusted if ten peers offered completely independent opinions, or if it offered the opinions of ten scientists who sat at a table together and shared their notes? The peer review F.A.I.T.H. model expects each opinion to be IDENTIFIABLE with its exact source. How could we possibly know where an expert opinion came from if that expert offered an opinion only after polling other experts first? I personally would not know for certain unless I knew that the expert did NOT poll others first. Most people do not. So to improve trust, we should give the community an ability to look at independant expert opinions. To that end, we should reward experts who volunteer independent opinions without first polling other experts.

Surveys preferably conceal their results to remove response bias. Blind survey votes naturally induce trust, we should embrace that reality.

Here is a partial list of the biases blind votes eliminate, making them intrinsically more valuable than naked votes:

• Status quo bias: Preference for the current state of affairs or "Bandwagoning"

• Outcome bias: An error made in evaluating the quality of a decision when the outcome of that decision is already known. E.g., "If I downvote this post it will be closed; therefore, I will not downvote."

• Omission bias: The tendency to favor an act of omission over one of commission. E.g., "These votes suggest the post is controversial therefore: I will not vote."

• In-group favoritism: Favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. E.g., "Moderators like me upvote, I should upvote!"

• Anchoring: An individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information offered -the "anchor" - when making decisions. E.g., "This post has a -10 score. I will look more critically at this post to decide."

Systematically removing bias promotes trust in new users, which will increase our user base.

For these reasons I feel voters who choose to vote in the blind should earn reputation slightly faster as an incentive to self-abstain from prejudice. As a user preference, vote scores are not displayed on any post until you have voted on it.

Applicability across different exchanges likely will vary. I feel hidden voting is universally beneficial yet naked votes should remain the default option.

Moderators on this site have confirmed that they use the vote score to decide if they themselves will cast a vote (fallacy could be due to any of the above biases). As such vote scores are influencing site moderation to the detriment of objective post content evaluations.

Some moderators argue a vote score helps make a decision whether or not to close a question. This is another argument in favor of this feature because moderators will have an incentive to cast a vote - they want to see the score. Yet in either case, the option is ...an option. Mods can elect to vote in the clear. The moderator workload would also be greatly reduced. As a feature it addresses many SE questions, such as these linked below.

“Spam Voting” - Should we stop it?

Would voting for posts based on their score be considered fraud?

A better serial voting trap

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Useful answers should go beyond "yes" or "no" but should have constructive content including ideas, pro's, and con's of:

• Use cases
  

• Definitions
  

• Implementation
  

• Reward
  

• Related issues & considerations

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Cheating with in-private searches Comments bring this issue up and it's not explicitly detailed in this question. As it stands vote counts are not available to in-private browsers. You only get a differential "score" subtracting down-votes from up-votes. A wholly useless number. Thus if a vote is split 50/50 with 100 upvotes favoring it, and 102 downvotes disfavoring it, the in-private search shows a very deceptive "-2" vote count, creating the false impression that "no experts agree." The score currently available to in-private searches provides zero quantitative data and is no more useful than a simple up/down arrow. It would serve searchers more if it were a simple ordinal ranking in the list of responses (An honest vote box should simply show vote majority as either ↑ or ↓ and present responses to the user in rank order: Highest to lowest, accepted on top)

Answer 1

If you prefer not to see post scores until you have voted, I've created a userscript for that.

HideVoteCounts

• hides vote counts as soon as page is loaded
• prevents fetching vote counts before voting
• re-hides vote counts if you unvoted
• always show vote counts on your posts
• intentionally does not work in mod flag queue or review queues
• if you really need to view a post's score, now you can double-click on the ?

Possible feature requests:

• sort by newest by default?
• sort answers randomly?
• check if user has the privilege to up/down vote

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Userscripts require Tampermonkey to be installed on your browser.

If you are on Android, your browser options are Firefox or Dolphin.

Answer 2

A very interesting idea, but it only addresses one specific use case, namely:

1. user X "finding" question Y.
2. And only to vote, X clicks on Y, and carefully digests all content whether "worth upvoting".

But that isn't the standard use case.

Most people come here because some search engine sent them this way. They have a problem that maybe question Y addresses. And what happens then?

1. You open the question
2. You determine whether the question matches your problem
3. You try to identify those answers you deem helpful to you
4. And, maybe, then you vote.

But how do you identify what is most likely helpful, in case there are 5 or 10 or 20 answers? By first looking at the vote counts.

In other words: these questions are not polls!

They represent a knowledge base, and the entries in that knowledge base are intended to be ranked according to quality. Most users need to see the vote counts first, otherwise they are likely going to waste their time with low quality content you find at the bottom end of highly frequented questions.

Long story short: I do think there is sense in this idea, but in order to really "roll" such a feature, we would need to gather a lot of statistics upfront that tell us when and why people vote where.

Answer 3

The idea is not foolproof (nothing is), however a productive user will tire of the steps needed to get the hidden voter benefit without being hidden (such as by searching while logged out, writing notes, then logging in). The implementation needs to ensure the time wasted circumventing it will not be worth the ROI.

Ultimately this solution in progress renders jumping in and out of blind fairly useless. As the user accumulates time in the blind the benefit increases.

Implementation:

Reward: The best reward is the status of being known as a self-disciplined objective user. Another consideration at this point to simply gain 1 reputation for each 3 blind vote credits.

• Additional reward may be that blind votes only account for 3/4 of a naked vote toward daily total. Thus a blind voter may cast a theoretical max of 50 votes per day vice 40. Because they accumulate at the 3/4:1 rate, the daily count is still technically 40.

• Alternately simply allow 10 blind votes beyond the 40.

Use cases:

• Power users: These users benefit from hastening their decisions. None of the above biasing elements are available to distract them from the only useful voting criteria - content.

• Answer seekers: These users benefit by the fact that the option is an option, not a standard practice. This doesn't impact non-voters in any way.

  that look at any interesting question and then vote, and persons trying to find answers

Definitions:

• Blind voter: is any user who has their voting preference set to blind. User avatar and profile clearly delineate these users from the standard display. Time in the blind is also displayed graphically, implying more trustworthiness.

• Naked post: Any post or portion of a post with the vote score displayed.

• Established post: A post which has achieved a lower threshold in score variance (by linear regression) and has been viewed by a significant audience. New post scores tend to vary wildly.

• Bracketed post: is any post displayed in a list by order of score where the scores above it and below it are naked, such that the blind score can easily be deduced. Bracketed posts are blind-ineligible. The blue question below is bracketed by scores of 48 and 39. It is blind-ineligible and the score would be displayed.

(fig. 1)

• Blind-eligible post: is any post which is eligible for blind voting by that user. This is a user-specific characteristic, no post is ever intrinsically blind-eligible. A running history of naked viewers with the last view time and the naked vote count follows each post to drive this decision; any user on this list will see this post blind-ineligible. Reinstatement removes users from the list. Whenever a naked score is displayed the associated post is blind-ineligible until the post meets the reinstatement criteria. Blind-eligible posts are clearly identified by the missing vote score, and also would be a slightly different shade, and sport a "blind" icon.

• Vote Transparency: The ratio of naked to blind votes issued on a post, where 100% naked votes render a score transparent, and 100% blind votes render the score opaque. Vote transparency is not viewable, it is a fuel gauge graphic. E.g., an answer with 8 blind votes and 4 naked votes cast (up or down) will have a 66.7% full (opaque) fuel gauge. The fuel gauge is empty for posts with 100% naked votes. The concept graphically suggests that blind votes are a shield from bias which inspire confidence. (This could be better)

• Blind vote: A blind vote is any up or down vote that is cast on a blind-eligible post by a blind user. It is tallied with naked votes on each post but also individually to calculate vote transparency. Search users see a single vote score but a fuel gauge graphically indicates the vote transparency. naked:blind vote ratio. (Rough graphic provided below)

(fig. 2)

A blind vote for the purposes of this feature has the following characteristics:

• • The voter has opted in to blind voting before viewing the post or the post score by any means (including in a search).

  • The vote has been cast on an eligible post.

• Blind vote credit: The blind vote benefit locks in after the vote has remained unchanged while the post receives either 25 additional views, or the greater of 3 votes or a 25% increase in votes (not score).

• Reinstatement: A post which is not blind eligible may become blind eligible by removing the user from the blind-ineligible list. This is called reinstatement. Only established posts can be reinstated. When the post vote count (not score) increases by n%, the post is reinstated. When the time since naked viewing (per user) reaches a set point, When the vote count changes by m%, the post is reinstated.

• Grandfathered post: is any post which can be assumed to be viewed prior to blind implementation, because the system did not exist. Grandfathered posts are blind-ineligible until they meet reinstatement criteria.

• Related issues and Considerations:
  

Un-voting - this is addressed in the definition of a blind vote credit

Post order by score: This remains unchanged, however the blind voter only sees the ordinal rank of the post (first, second, third, etc.) without knowing the scores or point spread between them, or even if any of the posts are actually "good"

Answer score bracketing: See fig. 1. If only one answer in a group is "blind" the post above and below will partially reveal a post score. Bracketed posts are ineligible for blind voting, in the definition. The score is displayed.

Vote transparency - This concept conveys how objective a post score is. A 100% opaque gives users confidence that every vote cast was protected from common biases. As a graphic gauge it doesn't reveal anything more than a ratio. The transparency number remains hidden to obstruct calculating votes. A score of 2 with a ~50% gauge can still be either 1/1 or 23/25 (naked/blind). The display votes privilege is protected.

New variables: This system adds variables to users, questions, answers, votes, profiles, and searches. It is far-reaching to do right however I believe improved objectivity will reap rewards in both site traffic and users.