Do not add any additional metadata to actual votes

Question

"Wait, what?" you may think. This just occurred to me and before I go on with the actual request, I'll explain a bit further:

Some sites, such as the lair of nerds Slashdot allows for voting individual comments (that's good as we obviously can see on any Trilogy site) and the comments are also rated with words describing the quality of content such as "funny", "insightful" and "informative".

This feature request is sort of an inverse feature: I'd like to get a confirmation that this won't happen on any of the Trilogy sites. The reason is that while commenting systems on news sites and similar do benefit from metadata describing the actual content, Trilogy sites should contain only informative answers with a hint of insightful wherever it applies to - that is, the site should always thrive to get good answers instead of losing itself into the depths of metadata craziness.

This request also relates a bit to a recent blog post about improved comments, especially this short part at the end of the post:

Now, we don’t want Stack Overflow to turn into a social networking site for chatty cathys, so there’s only so far we will go in supporting pure conversation.

PS. This request applies to both answers and comments alike.

Answer 1

I think I remarked before (somewhere.. but I can't find it) that it was interesting how no other sites seemed to pick up this particular dimension of the Slashdot moderation system.

Can anyone think of other sites which have comment metadata like Slashdot?

Answer 2

I think it's safe to say that this won't happen. It doesn't matter why a comment or answer was voted up.

Answer 3

FWIW, when I have Slashdot mod points, I don't find the categories helpful. Some time ago, Slashdot metamoderation changed from asking if a certain mod point use was correct to asking if the comment it applied to was helpful or not - in other words, Slashdot metamoderation is limited to good comment/bad comment. I wonder if they'd drop the categories for moderation if they weren't so entrenched.

On SO, I usually comment to explain a downvote, and sometimes for an upvote. I don't have to deal with inappropriate or multiple appropriate categories, and I can be as specific as I like.