We have been playing around with up/down vote functionality for the past couple of weeks and just activated it in the Lounge prior to this thread.

1. Everyone can vote a post up or down. The vote totals themselves show up on the bottom right of the post. You can't vote on your own posts (the up/down vote is hidden), but you will see the totals once it's voted on.
2. If a post meets some criteria for being "good," the post will be given a yellow border (so that others are drawn to the "good posts" in a big thread).
3. Similarly, if a post meets some criteria for a "bad post," it will be shaded. If a post meets criteria for a "terrible post," it will be shown collapsed with a red bar. The red bar of a collapsed post shows the user's name, and you can click a button at the right to show the post.
4. This functionality doesn't mess with the order of posts.

I'm using "some criteria" only because we're sure it'll change. The border, shading, and collapsed posts are based on the difference between up and down votes, not a total number of one or the other. We'll be making adjustments based on usage, especially with collapsed posts.

We have questions about whether it'll work here vs a place like reddit. A few of us like the idea while others have brought up legitimate concerns. In the end, we decided to roll it out, at least temporarily.

This is a trial run.

We'll give it a week or two depending on how things go, then we'll put it to a vote as long as it's not an obviously terrible idea. The goal is make threads a little easier to scroll through -- easier to find the best contributions and easier to scroll past the trolling and derailments. We aren't out to completely hide posts and will adjust as needed to keep that percentage really low, or based on your feedback.
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