Reading in the threads about karma allocation and app-testing has led me to suspect that our 'thumbs up' system is not working as we expect it to. I suspect this may be in part due to an influx of n900bs like me, not all of whom stop to ask exactly what that little click means.

And that's aggravated by the fact that the nice little graphic 'vote' doesn't necessarily tell me what I'm voting on.

So to take the example from the karma thread: people are down-voting blogs/news because they dislike the information contained in them - literally shooting the messenger. Which means that people who usefully and helpfully use their blog space and time to convey unpopular information (such as the repositories being down) are getting penalised for it in karma.

In contrast, people are up-voting apps because they like them, regardless of whether they still contain easily encountered bugs. There have been few apps made it to extras while still containing serious dung-beetle sized monsters, but there is some uncertainty being expressed: how does an app with a known bug get 10 positive votes? And the answer (from that thread) is that people are voting on popularity, rather than stability, buglessness and UI. (Not to mention hoards of people d/ling apps from testing and devel without ever voting)

The same thing is happening in talk, where people accustomed to 'thanks' and 'karma' systems from other places are thanking people who post one line throw away remarks, rather than being genuinely helpful - either as a popularity vote or simply as a way of saying "I agree".

Is there some way we can make our voting more useful - and perhaps make it clearer to new-comers exactly what they are voting for?