Viliam_Bur comments on Proposal: Show up and down votes separately - Less Wrong Discussion
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My preference would be just two numbers: total number of votes N (up plus down) and total positive score P (up minus down). Advantages:
Two simple, direct measures of the two main things one might care about: how much interest a post generated, and how well received it was.
Keeps the current karma score as one of the two variables.
Doesn't include new things more difficult to calculate with such as ratios
No redundant information; number of ups and downs can be easily calculated if wanted as one half of the sum and of the difference of N and P.
However, does not display explicitly the number of downvotes, for those who don't care to know it. Most of the time, I wouldn't. I might be too inclined to start wondering the reason for each of them, or worse, who did each of them.
Like this: "5 points / 7 votes"?
(Would mean 6 positive votes and 1 negative vote.)
Yes, although funny enough, seeing how it would actually look makes me less convinced that I want that and more attached to the current display (maybe it just triggers my status quo bias centers).
To me it indicates how showing derived facts instead of direct facts can be more confusing than helpful. I make an exception for showing the net point total because the current dynamics at least give some kind of rough notion of overall response and I don't want to introduce confusion, just add a bit more of the information back.
EDIT: the notion of direct I'm using here is not precise, which is part of the problem with this issue.