EA Forum readers should arguably vote such that the comments/posts/tags which have more karma, thus being more visible, are also the ones which deserve more attention. I wonder what this implies in terms of voting norms. Should one vote based on:
- Value?
- Do not vote if the comment/post/tag is roughly neutral.
- Upvote (downvote) if the comment/post/tag is good (bad).
- Strongly upvote (downvote) if the comment/post/tag is very good (bad).
- Difference between current and desired karma?
- Do not vote if the comment/post/tag has roughly as much karma as desired.
- Upvote (downvote) if the comment/post/tag has less (more) karma than desired.
- Strongly upvote (downvote) if the comment/post/tag has much less (more) karma than desired.
- Confidence about the sign of the difference between current and desired karma?
- Do not vote if not confident the comment/post/tag should have more or less karma.
- Upvote (downvote) if confident the comment/post/tag should have more (less) karma.
- Strongly upvote (downvote) if very confident the comment/post/tag should have more (less) karma.
- Other?
- A combination of the above?
My question is about voting under the current voting system. However, there is also the option of changing it, as discussed here by Nathan Young.
I did not mean to suggest the time to vote was an important factor.
I agree. My comment above was not clear, but with "if I see 2 posts" I did not mean "if I see 2 posts on the frontpage, and I am deciding on which to click". I meant that if I happen to read 2 recent posts at roughly the same time (often I am checking the posts from the EA Forum Digest), and they feel similarly good to me, I would be more likely to upvote the one with less karma.
For tags, I give more weight to the 3rd method. For example, if I only know a little about a topic, I will not strongly upvote/downvote the tag on a given post, because I do not feel confident about its value relative to other posts with the same tag.