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?

For apps, a multi-level voting system would work. For example, a rating should have a star system, one to five, for features, stability, karma. One could have one star for stability if keeps on crashing, but a five karma to encourage the developer. Also, it could be nice and stable and very usable but lack a lot of features that they want, but want to encourage the developer.

Karma could be called "like" or something similar, so one could convey the message of support for a lees then stable app. Encouraged, yes, promoted, no.

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For talk, I would very much like a tag-like system, such as +1, -1, thanks. Ideally, several tags would be great but that would make things hard to read and waste space. However, may posts could be reduced to "agreed" or "disagreed".

While not very helpful in promoting good posters, it would help in detecting trolling as a +10/-400 immediately clues to a special person. Maybe in green/red dots hinting percentage.

I have no idea how much good that would do, but it should separate the thanks system from the agreement.

Also, announcements should have thanking disabled. It's not fair, but it skews the results to no end. I am less than convinced with this one, there's no way to know which is an announcement.

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A better idea for Talk would be levels of thanks. For example, one could have Thanks > three levels. The normal button gives +1, but the user can enter a drop menu and actively thank for a good, lifesaving solution. Kind of like thread rating, those actually work (many have non onestar/fivestar rating).

Perhaps it would be good if the Thanks button could give fractions, say, 1/5 of a point (or whole point, then 5 and 15 and then divide by 5).

This way, the casual polite Thanks doesn't impact karma as much. OTOH, sometimes a "Thanks" isn't much when a person saves you a reflash or fixes something you've waiting for months.

In the end, it's down to responsible use.