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Stack Exchange is looking for sites that are willing to try out their 1 reputation voting experiment, which aims to improve participation and engagement. You can read more about it in this MSE post: “If more users could vote, would they engage more? Testing 1 reputation voting on some sites”.

TL;DR: We are interested in finding 2-3 Stack Exchange sites willing to volunteer to test lowering the reputation required to upvote and downvote to 1 so that we can understand how this change impacts participation on sites. This test will be run with direct communication between the company and the moderation teams and we will be monitoring user behavior during the tests for specific indications that adjustments to tooling or ending the test may be necessary. If successful, we'd like to expand this change to the network.

We’ve historically used reputation as a way to prevent misuse, but in doing so we’ve made it hard for people to participate at all without creating content. By removing or changing some of these barriers to participation, we hope to spur participation and engagement - including posting, voting, and curation/moderation. The goal of this particular project is to understand the impact of removing the reputation required to upvote and downvote.

Movies & TV SE has a low voting rate/participation

I think this experiment could be a great opportunity for Movies & TV SE. I’ve noticed that our site has a low voting rate/participation, despite having a wide scope, covering all kinds of movies and TV shows. Reputation is hard to come by, which might make new users feel unwelcome or discouraged from participating.

I believe the idea of the experiment is to see if more voting power (and more shiny internet points) will motivate more users to contribute. Most users tend to upvote more than downvote. And who doesn’t like a boost in their rep, right? More rep means more activity and participation. We can easily go back to the status quo if it doesn’t work out. We have nothing to lose by trying it out, and we might gain a lot in terms of participation and engagement.

On potential abuse

I’ve expressed some concerns about potential abuse of the lower rep requirement in this post on Arqade (Gaming SE) Meta. Catija (a community manager) assured me that the CMs will be watching out for any potential abuse and that the moderators and the CMs have the tools to prevent and deal with any abuse that might occur.

How does the Movies & TV SE community feel about this experiment? Should we give it a shot?

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    I support anything that will welcome and keep new users coming to the site. This is something that this community really needs to work on
    – steelersquirrel
    Sep 27 at 11:10
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    @steelersquirrel - Precisely this. The main issue that I think this site faces is that new users often seem to face silent downvotes and close votes as well as unwelcoming comments. Something that increases engagement and decreases negativity would be very good to see.
    – Valorum
    Sep 27 at 15:09
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    @steelersquirrel - I'm guessing the sites that volunteer for this experiment will also get some extra love and attention from the site's operators, and maybe some extra promotion. It feels like many declining sites in the network are just left neglected.
    – Valorum
    Sep 27 at 16:38
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    @steelersquirrel I couldn’t agree more. Welcoming and encouraging new users is essential for our community to grow and thrive. I think this discussion would benefit from your input. Why don’t you share more of your thoughts in an answer to this meta post?
    – galacticninja
    Sep 29 at 3:43
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    I don't really know what else to say on this subject. I have argued with the mods on this site until I'm blue in the face, but they think that the site is perfectly fine as it is. I don't really have anymore thoughts to share in a meta discussion. Valorum is more well versed in the workings of SE than I am :)
    – steelersquirrel
    Sep 29 at 13:22
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    @steelersquirrel Sorry, but that is not a fair characterization. Noone says the site is "perfectly fine as it is". Neither has anyone "argued" specifically about the voting experiment yet. As of now, we're still seeing how this goes. I'm personally not the biggest fan of this experiment, but neither am I entirely opposed to it, especially if the community deems it a reasonable endeavour, nor am I unaware that the site could sometimes use a few more upvotes on good questions. Your possible frustration in all honours, but that statement needs to be set in perspective a bit.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Sep 29 at 19:44
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    Though I'm not a huge fan of this proposal, I do feel that if anyone is going to volunteer, it should be a 'medium-sized' site such as this, also with little in the way of political agenda. A site with a hundred questions a day, or at opposite extreme one a week, would either be a nightmare to contend with or a pointless exercise.
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 1 at 11:07
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    It would be great to see this community be a positive and fun place to be again. Whatever that takes to happen, I'm on board.
    – steelersquirrel
    Oct 1 at 16:47
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    @steelersquirrel we will be the most happiest to see this site thrive. But for that we have to all positively work for it. And let's turn one stone at a time, this discussion is open here and mods will surely welcome community consciousness on it but we should give the community a chance to express rather than playing blames.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Oct 2 at 0:21
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    @Tetsujin - I'm not seeing much by way of incentive for the volunteer sites to volunteer. You'd think they'd offer more than just the chance to be a guinea pig.
    – Valorum
    Oct 7 at 18:29

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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No

This answer is provided so people can vote for it if they oppose participating. Some reasons to not participate:

  • Accounts could be created and used to vote and then abandoned.
  • Users who have not established any knowledge or understanding of either Movies & TV or the Stack Exchange model would be able to vote.
  • It will get easier to do vote fraud.
  • The site will be just a guinea pig for this experiment.
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  • @AnkitSharma "It will get easier to do vote fraud." I’ve expressed some concerns about potential abuse of the lower rep requirement in this post on Arqade (Gaming SE) Meta. Catija (a community manager) has assured me that the CMs will be watching out for any potential abuse and that the moderators and the CMs have the tools to prevent and deal with any abuse that might occur.
    – galacticninja
    Oct 13 at 3:41
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    @galacticninja - Given that I just lost more than 10,000 rep on SFF:SE due to the very belated detection of a voting ring (one that went unnoticed for multiple years), you may consider me somewhat dubious about the moderators and the CMs having the tools to detect and prevent abuse. They certainly think they have the tools
    – Valorum
    Oct 13 at 20:54
  • @Valorum Oh yeah, I also lost some rep on SFF SE for the same reason. (I believe that's from just one user.) I think that's a one-off. Usually, the mods and CMs are quite good at spotting voting abuse.
    – galacticninja
    Oct 14 at 1:13
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    @galacticninja The same CMs that just received another round of firings, including the same Catija that gave you this assurance? (And disregarding if this would specifically increase the chances of vote fraud or not, I'd generally second Valorum that vote fraud isn't particularly easy to detect and the tools for it have been lacking for years. Add to that the general laissez faire attitude of SE towards everything but SO, assurances notwithstanding.)
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Oct 25 at 16:44
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    @NapoleonWilson “same CMs that just received[…] firings, including the same Catija[…]?” I don’t think this is a fair point, since I wrote that comment before Catija was unexpectedly fired. Like many others, I was saddened by SE Inc.'s decision to fire Catija, because it meant that initiatives like this one might not happen anymore, leading to the gradual decline of the SE Network. Anyway, judging from the votes here, it seems that the Movies & TV SE community is happy with the status quo, so I'm not interested in arguing in favor of the experiment anymore.
    – galacticninja
    Oct 26 at 3:12
-3

Yes

This answer provided so people can vote for it if they are in favor of participating. Some reasons to participate:

  • I support anything that will welcome and keep new users coming to the site. This is something that this community really needs to work on - steelersquirrel
  • The main issue that I think this site faces is that new users often seem to face silent downvotes and close votes as well as unwelcoming comments. Something that increases engagement and decreases negativity would be very good to see. - Valorum
  • I'm guessing the sites that volunteer for this experiment will also get some extra love and attention from the site's operators, and maybe some extra promotion. It feels like many declining sites in the network are just left neglected. - Valorum
  • Welcoming and encouraging new users is essential for our community to grow and thrive. - galacticninja
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    I agree with all the comments about the need to increase engagement, the site's been struggling at around 2.7 questions / day for a long time (half the old graduation minimum) and it's sadly very rare to see interesting new content. But... I don't see how this policy would change the problems of too few new questions, and too many of those few get nothing but inexplicable downvotes (example) or nit-picking.
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Oct 13 at 14:16
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    @user56reinstatemonica8 This is an experiment, not a policy. We can easily go back to the status quo if it doesn’t work out. We have nothing to lose by trying it out, and we might gain a lot in terms of participation and engagement. I believe the idea of the experiment is to see if more voting power (and more shiny internet points) will motivate more users to contribute. Most users tend to upvote more than downvote. Who doesn’t like a boost in their rep, right? More rep means more activity and participation, including more users who can help out with the review queues.
    – galacticninja
    Oct 14 at 4:53

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