How to Increase Voting Behavior and/or Reduce Moderator Burden
I do not believe that anyone has the power to change others' behaviors by pleading with them or modelling their own virtuous internal processes, therefore I propose a systemic solution to "Low Voter Count" and "Moderators' Burden is Too High" that changes incentive structures on AU.
Problem: Askers just want their Answers
Maybe Askers cruise the AU site for an answer and don't want to pay a tax to explicitly inform the AU community that an answer was helpful?
Solution: Encourage Votes
Potentially ask users, "Did you find any of these answers helpful?"
- Use pop-up or other method to ask and then list the answers they've been viewing with checkboxes to tick.
It's possible users like an answer that has helped them even though it had gaps or was confusing in parts and are conflicted as to whether it merits an upvote or requires an edit or both.
- Explicitly clarify to novice users what an upvote or downvote conceptually represents and how it is supposed to help the AU community and remind them every 10 pages they visit if voting behavior is low
- Let users without enough points flag "Almost" answers that need improvement, reward 1/2 point
- Let users without enough points (even non-logged in) to suggest a flagged edit that receives slightly more scrutiny than edits from users with enough points. If this edit accepted, the user and the Answerer both get 2 points.
NB: Splitting up my answers for easier line-item voting rather than omnibus package voting.
