The "Meta Effect" is well known. Not a week goes by where a valid question is asked on Meta, and Meta users flock to Stack Overflow to upvote or downvote that question.

It's even getting to the point where the Meta effect is actively detrimental to welcoming new users to Meta.

Because of that, and because the purpose of Meta is to freely discuss issues related to Stack Overflow, I propose that we institute a system-imposed voting freeze (think of a new type of lock that only affects votes on the question) on Stack Overflow questions that are linked to in Meta questions for the first 24 hours of the Meta question's existence.

This freeze should only go into effect if the OP of the original Stack Overflow question is the one that poses the Meta question that references the Stack Overflow question.

This accomplishes two goals:

  1. Allows free discussion of a question's merits without adversely affecting the OP's Stack Overflow reputation. A new user that brings up a Meta question about their Stack Overflow question needs our guidance, not our judgment. The very fact that they're bringing their problem up to Meta is a step above what we see from users who don't care.

  2. Relieves moderators from needing to manually intervene when a question is targeted by the Meta Effect, as this requires near 24-hour coverage of Meta by moderators.

Robert Harvey's manual lock of a Stack Overflow question brought this idea up.

What prevents users from posting a question here, to lock a question on SO, as a means of "harassing" the user posting the original question? Automating this might not be as straightforward. I like the idea, though. –  Cerbrus Aug 19 at 14:27
@Cerbrus It could even be tailored that the lock only goes into effect if the OP of the Stack overflow question is the one that poses the meta question. Since these sites are linked together, that shouldn't be too hard (Sh*t's easy syndrome notwithstanding). –  George Stocker Aug 19 at 14:28
@ClémentMalet It hasn't worked yet... –  George Stocker Aug 19 at 14:36
Giving users the power to lock voting on their questions automatically sounds quite prone to abuse. –  David Robinson Aug 19 at 14:41
I wonder...would it be possible to do something like embed a non-interactive snapshot of the post in question into the meta question itself? That would allow people to view the content without being able to vote on it, but wouldn't prevent any necessary action from taking place on the main site. I don't imagine it would be an easy thing to do, and I'm not even sure if it would reduce the meta effect all that much...I'm just not sold on the idea of a total lockdown at the moment. –  JonK Aug 19 at 15:12
And there's the Reddit-effect, the HackerNews-effect, the Hot Question effect, etcetera. Singling out the meta-effect doesn't make much sense. Normalize it, don't make it so extra-special to get a question highlighted. I read way more English.SE and Physics.SE questions than SO questions in the Hot Question list. Lost opportunity: MSE ought to show SO questions in its Hot Question list. –  Hans Passant Aug 19 at 17:27
What's so wrong with a question getting a lot of attention? Are we not supposed to vote just because we arrived at that content through a particular channel? –  canon Aug 19 at 18:32
You don't understand what downvotes are for, @eddie_cat. –  Josh Caswell Aug 19 at 19:03
@JoshCaswell I thought they were for indicating that a post needs work, is unuseful, unclear, requires more research, etc. A few downvotes is more than enough to signal that to a poster. By the time they're asking for help the message has gotten across. & I think that a ton of downvotes influences the post's ability to get a positive reaction if/when it's reopened after improvement. If the post is unsalvageable it will be closed and not reopened. Why do we need to attack the post after the downvotes' function has been fulfilled? –  eddie_cat Aug 19 at 19:04
@JoshCaswell Not sure how punishing someone who is asking for help is 'the right thing'. –  George Stocker Aug 19 at 19:14
Downvotes are punishments now, @GeorgeStocker?! The help center needs to be revised. –  Josh Caswell Aug 19 at 19:16
Haven't paged through all the comments yet, but I'm sure this scenario has been posed: I make a question, "GIVE ME TEH CODEZ!!11", get a downvote, then come to meta and say, "Why is my question getting downvoted?" -- now a bad question is artificially protected from the community process. Or, expanding that scenario, if I make a question that says, "Stack Overflow sucks my balls", then post about it on meta knowing it will be protected. It will cleaned up eventually, but this seems like it is making more work for the moderators if a user can shield themselves from the community process. –  Chris Baker Aug 19 at 22:25
It is very troubling to me that so many of the moderators have recently adopted this attitude that downvotes are "punishment" or somehow to be staved off. We don't need to invent new features to prevent downvotes. If anything, we need new features to encourage them. –  Cody Gray Aug 20 at 0:39
I don't understand how it is a "binary" perspective. Yes, I'm rejecting the argument that downvotes "feel like a punishment to the recipient". I don't think we should care about that. If it feels like a punishment when you delete posts that are not answers, should we stop doing that and all hold hands instead? Downvoting posts has intrinsic merit as part of a ranking system and should be promoted. If a question is brought to Meta, it has been brought to the attention of the community and so it naturally needs to be voted on. If misconceptions about votes are the problem, then let's educate. –  Cody Gray Aug 20 at 5:24
@JonEricson DVs feel like a punishment - the day SO/SE cares more about the individual feelings of people who post bad content than about content quality is the day I will stop participating on this site for good. Where exactly in the SO mission statement does it say that we want to build a high-quality repository of answers to question about programming, but without ever hurting the feelings of people who cannot contribute to this goal? Caring about individual feelings is counterproductive to the SO goal, as should be evident by the last few hundred discussions about content quality. –  l4mpi Aug 20 at 7:09

15 Answers 15

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Update - See original below

I thought about this most of the weekend.

As far as I can see, this is the criteria that we care the most about:

  • Post is at -5 or lower, and reduced in score by at least 3 points in 30 minutes
  • 90% of all votes causing said reduction were a result of someone visiting the post with chat or a meta as the referrer

Now that could mean a number of things going on:

  • It's a spam post / rant / ZOMG LOOK AT THIS DOG'S BUTT sort of thing
  • Some other abuse / sinister case that I haven't thought of, where it wasn't a contribution someone genuinely thought was okay and should be well-received

We definitely don't want to auto-lock or anything else in these cases, we'd be short-circuiting our garbage collection system. Additionally, I see the potential for anything automatic being used tactically.

In light of that, the best thing that I can think of would be to raise a system flag when something has dipped significantly in score, and this dip is due to votes that stemmed from a link on a meta site or chat. These would be visible to moderators initially.

This doesn't fully address the problem, and I don't know if there's a good way to address the problem. At some point a plummeting score such as can be caused by 'mob' voting from chat or meta takes this:

There's something wrong with this, I don't know quite what but ...

And turns it into this:

These people are just punishing me. Thanks, people, I heard all 22 of you telling me how much I suck.

And that's one way the perception that we're a bunch of elitist aristocratic jerks can propagate. At some point a vote becomes not something that marks something as less than optimal or not useful, because that's clearly been established; it becomes something that just makes someone feel horrible and it makes me want to scream, every time I see it.

Hence, barring some kind of amazing epiphany, the only things to do here are (1) log, which I hope to get in place shortly (it is logged current, just convoluted to get at, and a bit delayed) and (2) look at implementing the system flag. Mods can then lock if needed, edit if they can, and (probably) go look at whatever it was on meta / chat that caused the dust to raise, which could be part of the flag.

Original Below

New answer, because thinking out loud gets me in trouble.

Lets log these first, based on referrer, and take a look at the scope of the problem that we're actually dealing with.

Just like we reverse votes when someone finds an answer you wrote, downvotes it, then goes through your profile and downvotes everything else they don't like, we should strongly consider the possibility that 'mob' downvotes, sometimes causing users to lose privileges or worse, is also a behavior that we should not tolerate. They would not have received them if we didn't make providing them opportunistic by calling them out specifically.

Keep in mind, the system does reverse hundreds or more votes daily as it detects suspicious patterns. I put it out to you that this is also a suspicious pattern - but might need more human oversight than a script can provide, and placing that within the scope of employees is fair game - it already is. What remains is do we want to call this only when it's needed, and should mods be able to summon the process to simply run? I don't know, I have to think hard about that.

Nothing is yet set in stone, we're not going to do anything without first gathering data. That's why this is currently deferred.

... of course, you're going to include other sources, and not just meta in this. It would be useful to see how powerful/frequent the meta effect is compared to, say, data.SE, hot questions, hacker news, reddit, ars technics and such. I put data.SE in there because I know I've triggered voting based on links to queries. It is also important to ask why such focus on down votes. I do acknowledge that hot questions could be a bit trickier to differentiate - how does one distinguish "What does the smiley face “:)” mean in CSS?" linked from the hot question sidebar rather than a meta post. –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 14:44
It is also important to consider if the votes are unwarranted Elsewhere it was said "Guess what: if your site is full of crappy questions, your site sucks - even if they're not highly-ranked by your own users, [...]. You can work to fix that - as painful as that process is - or you can bury your head in the sand and blame it on all of those stupid people from elsewhere. [...] Blaming someone else is easy and fun for the whole family - but it doesn't fix anything." –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 14:50
Trying to block (or reverse) down votes on posts that are deserving of such seems to indicate that this is a burying one's head in the sand and delay the ultimate fate of a crappy question or answer. One should be sure to also look at the ultimate fate of the post. Don't bury one's head in the sand and acknowledge that fixing crappy questions is sometimes a painful process that results in down votes and deletion of questions. –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 14:55
Tossing one more complication into the tracking the data... Just as the hot question side bar on meta can be difficult to differentiate from actual meta content, be sure to identify the source of a chat post. There's that little slide down feed ticker for questions that shows up and the occasional one boxed question from Feeds that is quite different than a post from a human in the room that leads to votes... isn't it? –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 15:23
This might also be useful to examine targeted voting patterns from chatrooms. I've been a little troubled by some posts that I've seen bombarded with downvotes after being posted into certain chatrooms. The degree of voting on these posts seemed unjustified based on their content, but I'm not sure where to draw the line for malicious targeted voting vs. people being free to vote how they want. It'll be interesting to see if anything could be learned from your study. –  Brad Larson Aug 22 at 15:27
This answer is still colored by what you proposed in your previous answer. "Keep in mind, the system does reverse hundreds or more votes daily as it detects suspicious patterns." As far as I know, in every single such case a person will have their vote annulled if and only if they themselves engaged in a pattern of voting. For instance, in the span of an hour Alice upvoted hundreds of Bob's answers. Whatever reversal happens is only because of Alice's own behavior. But to counter the meta effect, a single vote I cast on a post I happen to learn about through meta would somehow... –  Louis Aug 22 at 16:48
... be invalidated because a bunch of other folks also put their votes after coming from meta. Because others voted like I did, my vote does not count. Sheesh! But if I happened to come across the question the day before, my vote would (presumably) be okay. How is the vote I cast after coming to the post through meta materially different from a vote I would have cast the day before? –  Louis Aug 22 at 16:51
@Michael note that there are lots of votes, and how do you distinguish something from a post, or from the hot questions on the sidebar? And why just meta? How significant is meta compared to hot questions? Reddit? Hacker News? Chat? Ars Technica? Is this a big hubbub compared to other more significant sources? –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 19:59
If mass downvotes are turning the function from useful to harmful, why not put a limit on the number of max current downvotes a question or answer can have? For example, once a post hits aggregate -5, no more downvoting can happen. Upvoting can still happen, because people can always find it useful (and thus reinforce its importance to the site & community), but you can't downvote it anymore (unless someone else upvotes it, thus making the aggregate score -4). After a short period (a day? a week? a month?), -5 questions/answers should be removed from the system anyway. –  TylerH Aug 25 at 15:25
@TylerH There are 3294 answers with a score of -5 .. -50 - these are not getting removed. And if its locked at -5, how do you differentiate a -42 from a -8? or -38 from -13? And why should I be prevented from down voting something that is wrong? –  MichaelT Aug 25 at 17:50
@MichaelT ...didn't read the part of Tim's response where he says"These people are just punishing me. Thanks, people, I heard all 22 of you telling me how much I suck." This is real problem with StackOverflow, and there's no useful/productive distinction between a score of -5, -42, or -200. All of those vote counts show a clear message from the community. At such a point, increasing the downvote count only serves to rub dirt in their face. The long and short of it is, if a question accumulates enough aggregate downvotes, it should be marked as a community opinion... –  TylerH Aug 25 at 18:05
@MichaelT ... "this answer/question is bad/needs serious work". If I ask a question and it gets -5 downvotes, it's pretty clear that something is wrong. Another 10 to 30 downvotes isn't going to make it more clear that something is wrong. Comments or a community downvote "reason" (similar to the auto-commenting when flagging questions as duplicates) would be infinitely more helpful and less rude to newcomers. –  TylerH Aug 25 at 18:10
@TylerH By that logic, one should also cap up votes at +5, because after that everything is just fluff (it represents the communal opinion). At such a point, increasing the up vote count only serves to boost their ego. I'd suggest reading for some historical commentary on this and on blocking down votes. –  MichaelT Aug 25 at 18:25
@TylerH the 'and prune them regularly' is something that hasn't been shown to be done on Stack Overflow. Flags to delete answers are chancy things (I think I'm a bit under 50/50 for link only answers) and the 20k crowd seems hesitant to do so (… ). And mods will not delete things where there was an attempt at answering. –  MichaelT Aug 25 at 19:12
@TylerH you should discuss that with the (diamond) mods... though I suspect they'll tell you that its not their place to delete incorrect answers. 20k rep users, though, they can... though it does get tedious to be doing such moderation tasks on a purely voluntary basis. They (20k) can't do anything about answers that are up voted (so remember that its important to down vote answers that are crap that have a positive score so that they can delete them if the feeling comes over them). –  MichaelT Aug 25 at 19:53

What's the primary driving force behind the meta effect?

In my view, the meta effect happens because in order for us to understand the full context of the question being asked, we have to go to the main site to look at it. Once we're there we have access to our full range of moderating abilities, downvoting, flagging and the like, that we're encouraged to use. So what happens? We use them.

Can we prevent this by removing the need to visit the main site in the first place?

Embedded Snapshots

When a user links to a main site question, instead of being a direct link to the main site, have meta replace that link with a snapshot of the target question taken at the moment of posting.

This snapshot would be a completely noninteractive full copy of the linked post. We would be able to see the score (and the breakdown for 1k+ rep users), the comments, the edit history (up to the point that the snapshot was taken), and 3k+ users would be able to see close/reopen votes. The one exception to this would be that everyone would be able to see the content of the snapshot regardless of reputation - even if it's a snapshot of a currently deleted question (but it would retain the red background indicating that it was deleted).

The idea is that this removes the need to go to the main site, and in so doing hopefully reduces the magnitude of the meta effect.


  • All of the information pertinent to the question would be contained in the question
  • Any necessary community moderation tasks can still take place (so people can't post spam and then make a meta post about it, causing it to lock and require moderator intervention to kill)
  • Because the snapshot wouldn't change, the answers remain relevant without having to dig through the edit history
  • Avoids new users coming to meta complaining that their post is locked - this all takes place invisibly on meta
  • Potentially useful to other low reputation users because even if the original post is deleted, the snapshot will still be visible
  • Anything else?


  • A determined individual could still hunt down the question on the main site and downvote/flag/VtC, so this doesn't remove the meta effect, just potentially takes the teeth out
  • Relevant users might not be aware of the ongoing discussion because this all takes place invisibly on meta (but could be remedied by a comment)
  • Probably difficult to implement
  • Those snapshots have got to be stored somewhere...

Other things for consideration

  • What should happen if there's more than one link to a main site question or questions? Snapshot/lock for each? Just the first?
  • Should the snapshot include identifying information such as the username of the author/title of the question? Excluding it further decreases the strength of the meta effect (thanks @Kendra for the suggestion)
  • Anything else that I've missed/not thought of?

Alternatively - if we stick with the idea of a voting freeze, perhaps a banner should be placed on the frozen question linking back to the meta post discussing it:

Voting is currently frozen while this question is being discussed on meta to see how it can be approved. Think you can help improve the post? Join in the discussion!

Where "being discussed on meta" and "Join in the discussion!" would be hyperlinks back to the meta post that brought the voting freeze into effect.

Perhaps it could show the snapshot without the question title, and without revealing the original author. This could further decrease the success of a determined individual. –  Kendra Aug 19 at 15:56
Not a bad idea, I'll add that in, thanks! –  JonK Aug 19 at 15:57
I really like the idea of embedded snapshots. Sort of like oneboxing. Locking the original post is a bit heavy-handed, and can cause unforseen side-effects. –  Robert Harvey Aug 19 at 15:58
I agree with Ben Voigt that I don't think there's anything to be gained from anonymization. If a question is that bad, it should accumulate votes to close and not be hindered by the snapshot. So maybe close or reopen votes can be cast directly in the snapshot, if you still hold on to the anonymization idea. That way those post would be quickly removed from the close votes queue. –  Artjom B. Aug 19 at 17:08
@ArtjomB. It's not something that I see as critical to the implementation of snapshots - it would just serve as another layer of protection for the post's author. Anyone determined enough would still be able to find it, and it would be up to the community to decide if that extra layer of protection is worth making it a bit more difficult to VtC a truly awful question. That said, part of the motivation behind this is to enable the author to improve their post (possibly significantly) without being completely ground into the floor while doing so. After all, they cared enough to ask for help... –  JonK Aug 19 at 17:15
@ArtjomB.: Hmm, I don't like casting votes when looking at an old snapshot. It's not good to downvote a question that has been fixed via editing, because you're looking at an old version that deserved downvotes. Could be discussed whether the snapshot view should have voting enabled up until the point another edit takes place, but I don't perceive that an extra click to reach the current version before voting/commenting would be a major impediment to legitimate votes. –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 17:19
@ArtjomB If a question is that bad, it will accumulate close votes on the main site. If I understand correctly, JonK is advocating not locking the post, but simply making it more difficult for the hordes of Meta readers to downvote the post into oblivion and make it even more difficult for the OP to improve it and get good answers. The snapshot here wouldn't hinder anything, it would be as if the OP didn't post on Meta as far as most users are concerned on the main site. –  eddie_cat Aug 19 at 17:37
Re: "those snapshots have got to be stored somewhere," admittedly I don't have particularly intimate knowledge of the workings of the SO data structure, but don't we already store complete edit histories? You could just associate the revision number with the meta post and it would be fine, aside from close votes, deleted status, and vote counts. But I actually suspect any of those things could be calculated in real-time, since they'd all have timestamps. So I don't really think that's a con at all. It's something to put thought into, but not a hindrance, even for data storage. –  Matthew Haugen Aug 19 at 17:52
This is a far, far better alternative; I suggest posting it also as its own feature request. Additionally, I'm not sure how feasible it would be, but I'd think we would want to tie this strictly to the [specific-question] tag. Maybe even make that a special tag like [discussion], [feature-request], etc. Then, on applying the tag, you're prompted for a SO question (URL or number). –  Josh Caswell Aug 19 at 18:49
@Robert Can you clarify "can cause unforseen side-effects". I realise comments have to be brief but that concept interests me! –  pnuts Aug 19 at 22:04
@pnuts So which unforseen side-effects would you like him to forsee :P? One consequence of automated locks would be an increase in people coming to meta asking why certain questions are getting locked by (presumably) the Community user. I'm sure someone would find a way to abuse the feature as well, so we might have a few questions asked about potential meta-lock abuse as well. I'm sure there's probably others as well. –  JonK Aug 19 at 22:43
"Even if the original post is deleted, the snapshot will still be visible." Not only that, but also if the question is edited making the Meta topic moot in that particular case, there will be a copy of that original version, which benefits the Meta discussion. –  IQAndreas Aug 20 at 0:21
@MattK Meta participants are more likely to have enough rep for that. –  jpmc26 Aug 20 at 21:43
@MattK In theory. In practice, this question identifies a problem. (Whether you think it's really a problem is up to you, but the OP and a number of upvoters think it is.) This problem is specific to meta, and I dare say that the people responsible for the action in question are more likely to have enough rep to meet a rep requirement (unless it's 10K or something ridiculous). That's an assumption based on the normal rep I see on users in meta, but it could be incorrect. How that affects your conclusion about how to handle this is up to you. It's just an observation that affects your proposal. –  jpmc26 Aug 20 at 21:53
Oh, excellent! I hadn't been there yet today. Thanks! –  Josh Caswell Aug 22 at 18:52

Can we please stop pretending that the Meta effect is undesirable or harmful?


At worst the meta effect is neutral; posts aren't getting any votes they don't deserve. At best it's useful for site moderation -- questions in need of closure get there faster, discouraging off-topic answers.

I do like JonK's suggestion of providing a snapshot, so that everyone is discussing the same version of the question. But I don't think there's anything to be gained from anonymization.

If we need to improve the UI to educate users that voting is an assessment of technical quality and not a personal attack, let's do that. But don't try to inhibit voting.

Perhaps it would also be good to decay the influence of votes after an intervening edit, to help users recover from an initial bad draft (but then let voters cast the vote again if they feel it still applies). This should be done in such a way that it addresses negative scoring posts regardless of how they got views -- a "meta effect fix" does nothing for posts which are downvoted during the time they appear on the front page (or publicized with a share link and reddit or twitter) and are later improved. If a negative score makes fixing a post hard, that isn't the fault of the meta effect.

While your second paragraph has a point, there are indeed people who are downvoted purely for their actions and having nothing to do with their posts, which is one implementation of the Meta Effect. So it's not 100% accurate to say that it has no ill effect. That said, well argued point. –  Kendra Aug 19 at 16:21
@Kendra: If the problem is that downvotes deserved by bad comments get applied to the original post instead, perhaps there are changes needed to fix that (allow comment downvotes, for example). But that isn't evidence that the meta effect is causing harm. –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 16:23
@Kendra: Again, inhibiting valid voting based on content isn't the right response. If the community is using content votes to express something else, such as "We don't want this user to have moderation privileges because their moderation activities are actively harmful", then stack exchange should provide an approved mechanism for expressing that (voting within the user profile page, maybe within the activity subsection so it doesn't look like a rating of the user personally, but of their editing and moderation actions) –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 16:34
I completely understand where you're coming from. I don't see the meta effect as being inherently good or inherently bad - it always depends on which side of said effect that you find yourself on. From the perspective of the established community, the meta effect is generally good, it helps moderate the site quickly when it needs to be. From the point of view of the individual though, it's often quite a bad experience. There's a trade-off to be made somewhere to keep the good and lessen/remove the bad... –  JonK Aug 19 at 16:48
@JonK: If the meta effect results in deserved downvotes based on content, and those downvotes make it hard for an edit to recover the question, then that is a problem to the user who is honestly trying to improve but it should not be addressed at the meta effect level. Scores can end up very negative just from being in a very active tag, on the front page at the wrong time, etc. We should look for a solution that solves the issues with negative scores that apply to an older version of the post, regardless of how those voters found the post. –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 17:23
After thinking about it over my lunch break, I more clearly see your point and have rescinded my downvote. If you want to clean up our conversation, I am fine with that. –  Kendra Aug 19 at 19:19
You say "posts aren't getting any votes they don't deserve" but I challenge that in relative terms (and those are relevant to rep). Say two answers to two different questions are objectively assessable as of similar (high) quality, age and tagging. One question gets mentioned here, the other does not. I think the result is likely a significant difference in the number of upvotes to the two answers. –  pnuts Aug 19 at 22:12
This. All day this. –  GEOCHET Aug 19 at 22:55
I'm glad someone finally posted this. I wish I had more upvotes that I could award you. As I've said many times in the past, if someone doesn't want more attention on their question, they shouldn't bring it up on Meta. But usually, people do want this attention. And with all this talk about downvotes, we've forgotten about all the upvotes that people get on questions, forgotten by the community, which they bring to Meta. Voting is the normal, right, and proper mechanism by which the community assesses content. It would make no sense to disable it when that content is being discussed. –  Cody Gray Aug 20 at 0:42
this is just another extreme user wondering why the masses of regular users "don't get" SE. It comes across as a bit elitest, and judging by the points the user has, condescending too. If you want people to keep on taking up SE, it should be more accommodating to new users (many of whom won't read the manual to a help site... because they're normal and sane). Scaring off people trying to add to the community is not the right way to grow SE because it is too insular. –  bharal Aug 20 at 9:19
@bharal We should not really work to "grow SE". I think it is foolish and it clearly goes against the original goals. –  kapa Aug 20 at 9:33
@kapa that's insane - the site needs to grow, it only has a few million active users. Most will drop out over the years - i know i'm about to - as they get promoted out of dev or plain leave dev. Who is going to replace them if the community at-large is so reluctant to embrace new users? –  bharal Aug 20 at 9:38
@bharal The main problem is that most new users don't understand what the site is about. It is not clearly communicated. This is NOT a free helpdesk service. If they understood, much less of them came to the site. That would help making better content, because active, experienced users would not spend 90% of their time cleaning up the crap (and they would be less frustrated, so friendlier and having more time for helping new users). The current growth is not sustainable, and based on people misunderstanding the site. In a sense, SO already failed, or is failing. –  kapa Aug 20 at 9:50
@kapa but it is a free helpdesk service, backed by a recruitment site. That is what SE is, that is how they get their money to keep the site running, and to bother letting it grow. Without that, this site just becomes a massive money sink. –  bharal Aug 20 at 9:54
@bharal It aimed to be a library of programming questions and answers. It is becoming a free helpdesk service, a forum, which it really wanted to differ from. I have no problem with that, they should just announce that the goals changed. Remove half of the features and rules, which are only useful for building a quality library, and just an obstacle for people using a helpdesk/forum (start with those ugly, negative downvotes and close votes!). They could get much more money (some pros would leave, but thousands would join as the "negativity" is stopped). –  kapa Aug 20 at 10:09


Question: Which of these channels are acceptable, "organic", ways to arrive at a SO post and vote on it?

  • Google search

  • Stack Overflow search

  • Hacker News

  • Reddit

  • Discussion forum

  • Bug tracker

  • Email from my long-lost rouge hacker cousin Gerald

  • SE hotlist

  • curl -L$RANDOM

  • Related SO post

  • Related MSO post

A. All of the above

B. All of the above, except for the last one

Drop in the ocean


Hans Passant

The Meta effect is overrated. Hacker News will blow up a question more than Meta.

If Appending to array were asked today, it would get downvoted to oblivion. And yet in the months that it has been linked from Meta, it had 4 downvotes (probably not even from Meta).

Why vote at all?

You don't understand what downvotes are for.

Josh Caswell

Or upvotes for that matter. Upvotes and downvotes are how the community communicate the usefulness and accuracy of question and answers.

They aren't a slap in the face or a pat on the back. Well, maybe they are, but they are primarily for the next person who comes here with a question. The first (or second) answer they see is the one with the most votes. No system is perfect, not even voting, because it depends on (shock) voters, but this one is pretty good.

Four out of five stars

The more people vote, the more confident you can be the post is high quality or not.

A question with +192/-4 votes doesn't mean it's phenomenally good. Well, it sort of means that...but really means "a lot of people voted on this and a significant part think it's good." Technically, it doesn't say how good, just how confident we are that it's good.

Really, a lot of the arguments for "fairness" approach an averaged rating system, e.g. four out of five stars. It's not the weirdest idea, but it's a lot different than what we do now.

Just don't be deluded into thinking MSO is a special case of "too much" attention. If you really wanted to normalize across SO for biases, a more common bias in attention is the amount of time the question has been around. (Though I don't support that either.)


(1) On the Internet, the meta effect is small. (2) We need more voting, not less.

If that's the case, then why is reputation directly linked to the absolute number of votes that a post receives? –  Qantas 94 Heavy Aug 20 at 2:01
@Qantas94Heavy, like I said, votes are primarily for people reading the post, not the author. Reputation is more of a side effect (a nice one), but not what the world will benefit the most from. –  Paul Draper Aug 20 at 2:04
The problem I think you're missing though is the timing of the votes which can only be cast once. If someone brings a question or answer to meta with the intention of improving it, voting at it in its current stage can become misleading for the next person who comes here with a question, because when that next person actually sees it, it could be a really good question with inexplicably bad rep. Or they might not see it at all because of the poor rep. We do need more voting, but not when someone asks for help, because that is the stage where their q/a probably will be at its worst. –  Adam Jensen Aug 21 at 8:16
++ for "appending to array" example... trust me there are a lot more which should be downvoted, closed and deleted. –  vba4all Aug 21 at 9:14
@mehow 27? and some of those appear to be on topic, etc. –  Joshua Drake Aug 21 at 20:21
We need more voting in general. Spread out over all questions. We don't need mass voting concentrated on one question. Big difference. A Good Question badge, for example, should reward a question that lots of users found useful, organically. Not simply a question that had an associated meta post. Same thing in the down vote direction. –  Nate Aug 21 at 22:49
@mehow, your query makes at least one pointless assumption; namely that a good question must be more than 50 chars. –  Chief Two Pencils Aug 21 at 23:36
@ChiefTwoPencils maybe we should then re-define what a good question is because according to the official documentation I don't think you can meet all the criteria of a "good" question within roughly 50 characters... I have been hanging around for over a year and very rarely I see a "good" question that is one sentence long. The 100+ votes usually are from people who had faced the same problem - not from people who really thought a question was well written. –  vba4all Aug 22 at 7:04
The new top portion of this post is stellar. Spot on. To answer your comment question about Nate's use of "organically", though, usually people mean while freely browsing SO in "normal" (answering or hunting for a solution to a problem you have) mode, as opposed to looking for any kind of post in particular (to clean up, i.e.). –  Josh Caswell Aug 25 at 7:26

The argument for locking voting sounds remarkably like the complaints smaller sites have had about hordes of SO users coming in and voting on hot questions because of the extra attention that they have received.

During several questions and issues on old MSO and current MSE it was expressed that the extra attention to a question is just that. Attention. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. Hordes of voters voting on a post amplifies it, but the site should be able to deal with it on its own if it's a good question. If it's a bad question, then the extra attention means it gets dealt with quicker.

The powers that be have discouraged proactive protection or locking of these hot questions on other sites. I believe the same policy should apply to questions raised on Meta. Let the community (as a whole, including voting, close votes, and delete votes) deal with it. It's only something moderators should be looking at if there are flags raised about it that are correct and accurate - that's how all the other sites deal with increased scrutiny of a single question.

There is the possibility of 'going too far' and over moderating a post just because it's highly visible. We want to keep that from happening, as that can color the outside world's opinion of Stack Overflow.

From Should trending questions be auto-protected?

Yes, I realize that this is in the context of hot questions - but once again, if moderators believe that protecting or locking hot questions because of the added attention they receive is an issue, then it is likewise logical and appropriate that questions that have triggered the meta effect should likewise not be over moderated.

Let the community deal with it. If that means votes, it means votes. It's not any more of an exceptional case than a question showing up on the hot questions in the side bar and should not be treated as anything more. Yes, it will garner more votes. One question or answer in the whole of Stack Overflow that gets some added attention? So what.

  • One can even argue that protecting from meta effect has no sense at all as long as voting in hot questions is free to anyone. "Meta effect brings attention of site experts (hell, if you're on Meta you're probably more likely to be an expert on the main site than an average site voter). Hot-Question effect is the opposite - it brings the attention of a bunch of people who are (putting it extremely mildly) NOT experts, and frequently vote incorrectly in terms of quality of the post as assessed by experts, and due to their sheer numbers, swamp out any ability of small sites' experts to counteract their votes." If you want meta effect protection, you better be prepared to address concerns like that.

Every day dozens of questions get the hot question effect across the SE network. A question or two on SO triggered by Meta is inconsequential in the scheme of things.

since this is tagged feature-request, I eagerly await it to become status-completed. This would look so... lovely against recent decline of The association bonus should not enable users to vote on every site –  gnat Aug 21 at 16:47
Sorry, -1. These 2 are NOT AT ALL identical. Meta effect brings attention of SITE EXPERTS (hell, if you're on Meta you're probably more likely to be an expert on the main site than an average site voter). Hot-Question effect is the OPPOSITE - it brings the attention of a bunch of people who are (putting it extremely mildly) NOT experts, and frequently vote incorrectly in terms of quality of the post as assessed by experts, AND due to their sheer numbers, swamp out any ability of small sites' experts to counteract their votes. –  DVK Aug 22 at 2:44
@DVK so, the meta effect would need even less of a reason to proactively moderate the question compared to the hot questions? The votes the meta effect would generate are ones from experts that are familiar with what the site's expectations are? –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 2:49
@MichaelT - yep. (and yes, the conclusion from my point would be that Meta freeze makes no sense - I downvoted OP's question as a sign of disagreement). –  DVK Aug 22 at 2:52
@DVK and while I happily accept the down vote, I should point out that I personally don't entirely agree with the sources I quote. I should point out the location of the bit I quoted and the author of this question. The don't over moderate is an important point and trying to prevent the meta effect is over moderation. –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 2:57
@MichaelT - if you wouldn't mind removing the Hot List part, I would happily upvote since I agree with the rest of the answer as specifically applied to Meta effect –  DVK Aug 22 at 3:10
@DVK I'll look into it when I'm back in a better editor environment. –  MichaelT Aug 22 at 3:15

Ha, another sneaky way of introducing a late-summer of love...

My argument for my NO

(This is in a case when someone genuinely comes to meta to seek advice on improving their question) - most likely it's going to be a new user.

Before posting, we encourage people to search and do research in order to ask a good question. This used to be (or is it still...) one of the SE' requirements to meet before asking.

Therefore we expect people to at least visit the help-centre page and read other meta posts on improving their questions. (easily researchable).

So once these users visited the above links they should already have a pretty good idea on how to improve their own question. However, if they still don't then the "meta-effect" brings a good effect because if someone is not willing to improve they should be downvoted since they truly deserve it. We should not be throwing upvotes just for the willing, we need to see an actual improvement. We don't upvote just because someone has complained - this is not a kindergarten - we don't give out candies out for nothing. On the other hand, if the user improved his question there are multiple ways to get attention to their question. (chat, bounty, meta!)

So essentially what I am saying is that there should be no-one with an immunity from being downvoted into oblivion if they deserve it. It's as easy as don't post until you're sure you want to post, until you have some good points and can defend your position and expose your idea to the entire world (well, world of SE at least).

On the other hand, if someone has done their "homework" and improved the question and brings it to meta the "meta-effect" then kicks in and balances out the votes. It does good!. There are rarely any situations when someone who brought up an issue to meta end ups crying alone in a corner...

What I am sure we do not want to encourage is the abuse of specific-question tag (but that's altogether another issue) as we do not want every single user who has received a downvote or 2 on their question to ask for a personal advice on improving their own question...

Related: Eternal September

It would be great if SO finally adopted this view (initially it pretended to be like that - quality above all). Users should be treated as "grown-ups" (I don't even dare to say "professionals" or "enthusiasts"). Or maybe SO has to redefine themselves: "Stack Overflow - just your usual programming forum". The decision must be made, sooner or later. The distance between words and actions is getting bigger and bigger. –  kapa Aug 20 at 9:16
@kapa exactly! you have elaborated what I meant by introducing a late-summer of love –  vba4all Aug 20 at 9:19
I don't disagree, but your wording seems a bit harsh to me. I'd guess that at least 99% of the crappy content is coming from (new) users, which would never bother to post a follow-up question on meta. The users which actually do that, have the ability to improve. Hence, I think your complaint is slightly aimed at the wrong audience. –  dirkk Aug 20 at 11:36
@dirkk when people spend 2 minutes writing their question and the first thing they do after the question is closed is coming to meta then this is not the path we want them to take to improve their question. I think they should first do their own research and trust me there already are so many resources available within SO and META that should at least give them a pretty good idea what to improve. Most of the "why was my question downvoted and closed" are 2 sentences long seeking general advice which turns in to a personal guide to get their question reopened. General is the key word here. –  vba4all Aug 20 at 11:59
@mehow I agree with your reason what they should do. However, I have a different perception of the problem. Mainly, I really don't see so many 2-sentence-long general advice seeking questions here on meta. I don't really see this as an issue. The main issue by far is for me the number of users who get closed who don't bother at all about the standards of SO and also don't care whether their question gets closed. –  dirkk Aug 20 at 12:08
well here we go –  vba4all Aug 28 at 15:57
and follow up –  vba4all Aug 28 at 15:58

Well intentioned, but in my opinion this does not solve any problems.

This idea spawned from wanting to help a user who asked a "poorly received" question and then asked a question on meta regarding it. In order to help them apparently it was important to lock their question to prevent the "meta effect" from deleting their question (which was the direction it probably was going).

The problem with saving that question is that it should have been deleted. The meta effect is really just the attention of people who actually understand how the exchange is supposed to work. That user copy pasted a piece of code from another answer

enter image description here

and said "what is this doing"?

enter image description here

The result of that process was an un-salvageable question from the get go.

Regex may be complex, but there are ways of understanding it through self education (research) rather than just asking for others to explain every version of regex someone may come across while looking at SO posts. If there were a post asking what the regex did of every complex regex on SO, that would be undesirable.

This situation is not a good poster child for "protect this question from meta". It doesn't matter if it had 24 hours or two weeks, it would still end up being closed as "seeking help debugging" and deleted.


I'm torn on this one. I can see that it'd be nice to not have a user that's genuinely concerned on improving their question suddenly receive a barrage of (presumably down in most cases) votes. However, at the same time, I also agree with Ben Voigt's answer regarding what votes are for.

As far as automating it is concerned I can see that fraught with difficulties. What if someone is asking "should I have closed post x as a dupe of my post y" etc... I'm also not convinced about the 24 hour thing. George Stocker makes point two of his proposal Clears up moderators to not need to physically intervene when a question is targeted by the Meta Effect, as this requires near 24 hour coverage of Meta by moderators.

What if the system kept the mods/community managers/devs informed instead?

If someone posts on Meta with a link to one of their own questions (possibly answers?) then have the Community user (or whatever's deemed suitable) raise a flag for that post on Meta which probably wouldn't be as high priority as spam/offensive, but slightly higher priority to others. One could have the main site automatically lock/freeze (or whatever) the main post, but perhaps for no more than 1 hour. That should be sufficient time for a member of the team to check it out and either extend a freeze period, or immediately remove it.

The beauty of an automated system is that it requires no human intervention. If we create a new voting freeze status, moderators could remove it if needed. So the difference between a flag proposal and the original is a what the default action is. (That and a human would need to make yet another decision if we use a flag.) I think we could probably design a system that would require no human intervention except in exceptional cases. If we can, we should prefer it to a more manual process. –  Jon Ericson Aug 19 at 21:30
Info (is good) but may not help with @George’s thrust (being less forbidding to noobs). Mods would be choosing “on hold” or extending the freeze (as I can’t see them doing much editing). If unfreezing within ~1 hr the meta effect would be similar to now (other than for enhancing edits in that interval). It seems most noobs value a solution far more than they are displeased by whatever the negative number happens to be. “On hold” may be even less welcoming. Recently where I lurk I have rarely seen less than -6 (quite possible within 1 hr) before disappearing or “on hold” anyway. –  pnuts Aug 19 at 22:45

I think this is a great idea, except for one minor detail: instead of locking out all votes, it should allow up-votes, and only lock out downvotes.

Memo to self: every question you post from now on must be immediately followed up with a question on meta mentioning it.

Exactly. Antiupvotes are doubleplus ungood. We can't have people being judgemental when they use their judgements. –  Josh Caswell Aug 22 at 18:47

Freezing voting is an ideal way to prevent the meta effect. A thoughtful response on meta combined with a sympathetic edit provides the maximum impact for helping folks who really need help. But votes can be a distraction. Having reached out to meta for help, there's no need to drive the point home with more downvotes. Worse, if users know about the meta effect it actively deters bringing their meta questions to meta. (I don't know how common that knowledge is among people who have these questions, however.)

If meta is going to be the place people can come to get help with their specific posts, we need to be able to provide prompt feedback. After a helpful edit, there's no better reinforcement than a handful of upvotes. Therefore, I suggest that the voting freeze be lifted after someone (including the OP) edits the post. That would slow down the meta effect long enough for someone to suggest an improvement.

Giving users a way to immunize their posts against votes seems counter-productive. See what JonK wrote in his answer about the potential for locking spam. –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 16:27
Should we exclude tag-only edits from lifting the voting freeze? They arguably don't improve a post sufficently to turn a bad question into a good one. –  JonK Aug 19 at 17:21
@Ben Voigt: I can't think of a worse way to prevent spam from being removed than to announce it on meta. Even if a moderator doesn't notice the meta post, half a dozen spam flags would smack it down pretty fast. –  Jon Ericson Aug 19 at 17:22
@JonEricson: Can you flag locked posts? I seem to recall a particular Zalgo-regex-as-XML-parser-comes answer getting a lock specifically to prevent flagging. I agree that a meta post will do more to ensure spam does get removed than help it survive... in the long term. In the short term it might also increase the mean time to deletion by handicapping most of the users who normally eliminate it. –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 17:28
@Ben Voigt: The proposal is for a new type of lock (or freeze, if you will). We should make such posts flaggable, deletable, editable, and closable. The only thing that would be frozen would be up and down votes. –  Jon Ericson Aug 19 at 17:38
@JonK: I think so. Sometimes a question is downvoted because the OP has no idea how to tag it. (See also: titles.) If someone fixes the tags, people should have a chance to vote based on the change. –  Jon Ericson Aug 19 at 17:49
@JonEricson I am glad that you realize that anomalous voting patterns from the SO community can be an issue when focused on individual questions. Do you think you could implement this on hot questions too? It can be just as damaging when poor questions get massive up votes as when a poor question gets massive down votes. Worse in some cases because it means to the person asking it that (or the poor answers on it) that they should continue to do it. If, however, it isn't the case that this should be done with hot questions, it should be asked what is the difference between meta and hot? –  MichaelT Aug 20 at 2:07
@MichaelT: I don't see that as a comparable problem. In the case of a question raised on meta, the assumption is that the question (or occasionally, answer) needs fixing. If a question is noticed by the "hot question" algorithm, it generally is because the community has found something worth looking at. In fact, it's impossible for a question to get on the list without upvotes, answers, and answer upvotes. All of those things happen before a question hits the network. –  Jon Ericson Aug 20 at 2:55
The solution to popular crap questions is the same as the ones that show up on meta. Sometimes it means we have to close them faster, or edit them to be more on topic and less soft. The solutions to what to do to meta effect questions are the same ones that we've been told are the solutions to popular hot crap questions. If locking a meta effect question automatically is the proper approach, I don't see why it would be a bad thing for hot questions so that they can be fixed from the soft question aspect into something better without getting scores of votes and a few crap answers. –  MichaelT Aug 20 at 3:34
@MichaelT: It's very unusual for crap questions to gather the necessary upvotes and answer to make the hot questions list. Generally, crap questions get closed and downvoted first. Or to put it another way: voting is the only reliable signal we have of quality. A vote freeze (for any reason) would need to be: a) rare,and b) for posts that have a strong likelihood of being edited. Freezing hot questions fails these criteria. –  Jon Ericson Aug 20 at 3:44
@JonEricson I would urge you to discuss this with the moderators of the smaller sites. Crap questions hit the hot questions all the time. They encourage crap answers. This isn't the issue here though. The question is "should posts that have attentional visibility (attention from meta) be proactively locked to prevent anomalous voting patterns?" I'm just saying that the solution to the additional attention and votes should be applied across other sites. As pointed out there is a very real risk of over moderating that should be considered. –  MichaelT Aug 20 at 3:49
@MichaelT: Not only have I talked with moderators of small sites (and larger ones, like The Workplace, who worry about hot questions), I was a moderator on a small site. I'd happily trade a handful of posts that get disproportionate voting for the opportunity to reach many thousands of potential users. I take that back: I want the lucky authors of hot questions and answers to get their reputation paydays. Blocking voting would be like limiting the prize a lottery winner takes home for the sake of, what? Fairness? –  Jon Ericson Aug 20 at 4:04

The meta-effect is yet another issue that would be best handled by making the effect of votes etc. proportionate to the number of views. For example, a question should be closed when X% of views result in close votes, rather than for an absolute number of close votes.

The immediate effect of a question being linked from meta is increased views. If a large percentage of those increased views result in close votes, the question should be closed. If a very small percentage of a large number of views result in close votes, it should stay open.

I feel this is a nice idea... But what about questions that get a lot of Google hits from unregistered users? That would skew the view results. –  Kendra Aug 19 at 18:21
A more sophisticated version could scale each activity by the number of views by people with the corresponding privilege. –  Patricia Shanahan Aug 19 at 18:27
I disagree, I don't think this would be a suitable solution and it introduces a large number of side-effects, which you do not address. For example, my favourite tag is low-traffic, each question getting around 50 views, so to match the 5 close votes we would set the threshold to 10%, which is ridiculous for popular tags. But we can't just use something like 1%, then we need just half a close vote for my tag. Also, the google effect as mentioned is also relevant. This formula seems to me to be a difficult heuristic and I think many things could go wrong there. –  dirkk Aug 19 at 19:29
+1 Exactly. A popular question is often closed because when thousands of people see a question, the 5 close vote threshold doesn't amount to much. –  Andomar Aug 19 at 19:39
@dirkk: You can use (4 + 2%), for example. –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 23:17
@BenVoigt So for a question with one million views you would need 20004 close votes? Evene with just 10000 you would still need 204 close votes, which seems ridicously to me. But my point here is exactly, that such a formula is impossible to come up with as it simply is a weird heuristic. Also, as I said, it introduces a number of side-effects not considered here. One problem is that the number of views is always increasing, so would you reopen questions automatically? Or do you just consider the number of views on the time of closing, which in practice would be the lower threshold. –  dirkk Aug 19 at 23:32
@dirkk: Reopen from additional views: No, definitely not. You could put an upper limit on it as well. Or use 4 + 20% * sqrt(views) But honestly, if a question gets to 1 million votes without being closed, it probably ought not be closed, requiring over 100 votes to do so shouldn't be a problem. (It might be a candidate for a historical lock, but not closure) –  Ben Voigt Aug 19 at 23:37
@BenVoigt I don't think this can be properly addressed in the comments. If you think this would be a good feature I would suggest to open a feature request or a discussions. We just touched the surface of this and I still see many open problems. I don't think this is a good idea, but I am open to getting convinced by good arguments and a thought-out proposal. –  dirkk Aug 20 at 0:03
@dirkk If a question has already had one million views and didn't reach the close threshold way before that, it's pretty unlikely that it really deserves closing. Requiring 20004 close votes would probably be about right. –  Ian Goldby Aug 20 at 10:46

This, in conjunction with Jon Ericson's meta post, is a brilliant way to assist new users asking how to improve their questions.

If the lock is only implemented when the OP of the Stack Overflow question posts the Meta question, it can be far more encouraging to new users. It gives them a chance to see that something is wrong, they need to fix it, and they won't be penalized for trying to fix it.

At the same time, there are users right now trying to close such questions as duplicates. This would also have to be dealt with, or the lock on the post will be pointless as the users won't get the advice they need to fix their question. Instead, they'll get canned advice that they've likely read in the help center. (If it's clear they haven't read the help center, then it's much more acceptable to close the post as a duplicate and let them waste their lock.)

I also feel, however, that users of a certain rep should be able to bring a post to Meta to ask about how valid something is, or ask about something to do with the quality or content of a question, without getting it downvoted to oblivion. Perhaps give an option to users of, say, 2k* rep or more to post the link and check a box to auto-lock a post they ask a question about on Meta. It could be the user is asking something in a way they are unsure is on-topic, or it could just be issues with comments, but something the OP of the Stack Overflow question said causes others to downvote the question.

Now on that note, we have to realize someone will try to game this. Perhaps until 500* rep, the lock is available to a user. Then at 500*, they only get so many a month or year. This prevents gaming of the system (after 500 rep) and still allows everyone to ask for assistance with their questions, should they need it.

This limit would be useful as new users currently appear to be asking the type of "How do I improve this question" questions that this would most likely be used for right now. At the time of writing this, this question and this question are in the Hot Meta Posts. Both are by users under 200 rep (at time of posting) and both are asking how to improve questions that were not well received.

*Note: Rep amounts open to debate, just a suggestion.

You might want to add a convincing justification for making it a protection only (or mostly) available for new users. –  Deduplicator Aug 19 at 15:44
@Deduplicator Not solely available to new users, but more open to new users with limits imposed on users above a certain rep. I've seen a lot of "How can I improve this question?" type of questions the past week or so, and it appears to mostly come from lower rep users that want to rephrase or correct their questions so they fit with Stack Overflow and help them get a better response. At the same time, that doesn't mean higher-rep users are exempt from having a bad day, asking a bad question, and having a hard time understanding what they did wrong. –  Kendra Aug 19 at 15:47

If the meta effect is indeed something we want to prevent, then I think a voting freeze is reasonably good idea. However, I don't believe we need to block all votes on the question; just the ones from meta.

When a user posts a link to a main-site question on meta, rewrite the link to include some kind of tracking payload which would allow the main site to detect that users clicking that link arrived from meta. The main site could then prevent that particular meta user from voting on the question for 24 hours. This would stop the meta effect without effecting votes from users who didn't arrive from meta.

Obviously this method isn't perfect, but it's better than banning votes on the question entirely.

Telling me that I specifically as a user, am now not allowed to take an action that others are, makes me feel punished. Punishing users is generally bad practice. If the feature is disabled for everyone, it doesn't feel like a punishment anymore. Just moderation. –  Cruncher Aug 19 at 18:52
@Cruncher But if we're saying that the meta effect is bad and needs to be stopped, then isn't that equivalent to saying that votes from users who arrived from meta aren't welcome? E.g. "You got here from meta. Feel free to discuss and improve the question (or even vote to close, if appropriate), but please don't involve yourself in voting." –  Ajedi32 Aug 19 at 19:06
In practice, this will make little to no difference while increasing the complexity of the feature. On SO, organic voting on questions is somewhat rare. Besides, if a user decides to ask on meta and we grant a reprieve from downvotes there, why wouldn't we also give them a break from organic votes? –  Jon Ericson Aug 19 at 19:13
@JonEricson "if a user decides to ask on meta and we grant a reprieve from downvotes there, why wouldn't we also give them a break from organic votes?" Because if the intention is to stop the meta effect, then it seems like an odd side-effect to also be stopping votes not from meta. Also, there's the potential for abuse discussed in other comments on the main post above. –  Ajedi32 Aug 19 at 19:22

Meta is Murder:


Meta SO is place where bad ideas are born. For a demonstration, switch your browser to incognito mode and try to ask a question. Many wizard pages later, you're made to check a box that reads

[ ]  thanks, I will keep these tips in mind when asking

Are you kidding me? I will read your f**** tips when I .... whatever. One shrugs and checks the obligatory box. But its nefarious purpose has been achieved. By the time you arrive at the question box you are a 100% sure to have forgotten what you were going to ask.

Mentioning a question on meta is like pouring honey over yourself and running into an evil bee swarm. The meta effect teaches people a useful lesson. I would not remove the bite from this lesson by implementing a voting freeze.

Exactly. And the exact same procedure happens for the main site as well. Which is why no questions are ever asked there either ... no wonder this network is such an empty place ... –  Bart Aug 19 at 20:09
I think I agree with you -- voting freeze bad? But I don't really understand this answer. The bits in the middle seem off the topic. –  Josh Caswell Aug 19 at 20:20
@JoshCaswell: Tried to show an example of how meta works. Trying to force people to read a FAQ is universally recognized as counter productive. Then if question quality drops further, we must add more checkboxes, right? Because we can't be wrong –  Andomar Aug 20 at 5:56

How about when you make the post to meta, for a grace period the following icon will appear in place of the votes?:

enter image description here

You may still up or down vote, but they will be invisible to other users until the post is resolved, or the time has run out.

Clicking it could even link you to the relevant meta post.

This won't prevent downvoters, and actually may even make it worse. I know many people don't downvote when the post is already heavily downvoted. Sort of like "enough is enough" stopper, which you suggesting to remove. –  Neolisk Aug 19 at 18:56
@Neolisk: It's not strictly relevant to this question, but I think that stopper should be removed. We are voting on technical content, not based on personal feelings or existing votes. –  Lightness Races in Orbit Aug 20 at 9:54

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .