After some discussion - while we do have some reservations, I feel like we might actually be a good fit to try this out on. For those not in the loop, Catija has an extensive write up on Meta
In short there would be temporary adjustments to voting limits
There are three main privilege changes happening here as part of our test:
Reputation required to cast upvotes is changing from 15 to 1
Reputation required to cast downvotes is changing from 125 to 1
The 1 reputation cost to downvote answers will be removedWe will notify logged-in users with <125 rep to let them know that they can vote with a popup.
To understand motivations for new downvoters, the first few downvotes from a <125-rep user would require them to explain their downvote - this information will not be posted anywhere, but will instead be collected by our research team and bucketed into categories so that we can better understand reasons people downvote. While we expect that many voters may just enter gibberish, we feel like we'll get at least some usable information.
Looking at the volume of posts we use, and that we have a solid core of users who can flag - I feel like
if there's obvious voting issues, between the current tools, that we would have CMs keeping an eye on things, user flags and our volume, it shouldn't be an excessive workload
I'm generally available during singapore waking hours should there be an issue, and I can escalate formally in an emergency
We're fairly well aware of potential sources of trouble - and frankly these might be good data if they turn up and are handled.
I'm actually advocating for this here. We'll be deciding by vote spread, but answers with feedback are welcome.
Keeping this open ended dosen't seem to have a point, so I'm hoping, if there's no clear objections I'm hoping we can make a decision in 2 weeks from now (october 7th) and we'll let the CMs involved know.
