> Do you think this will hinder the workings of sites like reddit?
I do. The user will think "Well given that I only have X to spend, I'd better be careful what I vote for". That will lead to less votes being placed, and thus, reduced interaction / community activity.
It's the same reason you don't want to cap the amount of submissions or comments someone makes. A flood control (max X per Y time period) to stop bots and spammers, sure, but no hard cap - or an inhumanly high one at least, bearing in mind that some people are indeed inhuman when it comes to voting/commenting.
I agree that showing the user that they are expending some sort of resource by voting will cause them to act differently or be more conservative with it.
An idea I've had is handling this behind the scenes by weighing the votes accordingly. Let's say each user only has 1,000 "points" but infinite votes. Votes 1,000 times? Each vote == 1 point. Just vote once? That vote is worth 1000x as much as the other guy. Spam a million votes on everything, and each one is basically worthless.
Of course, handling it exactly like that is way too simple, it would need to be balanced more carefully than that. In that naive example, someone who reddits for 5 minutes per month and votes once has as much power as someone online 24/7. Users would also be able to figure out how the system works if scores are visible in some way.
The specific use I played with this for (but never got around to finishing the project) was for movie reviews. There are people who will rate 50% of moves 5-stars and 50% of movies 1-star, but never in between. And some people who are much more selective and may give a 5-star rating to only a few movies ever. A 5-star rating from both of these users should not be valued the same.
If people are upvoting "the right things" then limiting votes is counter-productive. If people are upvoting cat-pictures, then the problem is that the site is not selecting the right group of users and better filters are needed so that the community has the desired structure.
Beyond the concerns you raise, vote caps etc., inhibit problematic behaviors mechanistically rather than via better social structures. Limiting the number of posts a person can make per day is one way of addressing potential flame wars when the underlying problem is that flaming is deemed acceptable behavior [and consequently such sites attracts people who engage in flaming and encourage some people to post in ways that get all their digs in at once].
The alternative of building community norms is harder. Mechanism can support it, but success depends on the over-arching social structure.
> I do. The user will think "Well given that I only have X to spend, I'd better be careful what I vote for". That will lead to less votes being placed, and thus, reduced interaction / community activity.
It's worth pointing out that Slashdot has run successfully for decades with users getting limited moderation points.
I do. The user will think "Well given that I only have X to spend, I'd better be careful what I vote for". That will lead to less votes being placed, and thus, reduced interaction / community activity.
It's the same reason you don't want to cap the amount of submissions or comments someone makes. A flood control (max X per Y time period) to stop bots and spammers, sure, but no hard cap - or an inhumanly high one at least, bearing in mind that some people are indeed inhuman when it comes to voting/commenting.