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OK - so nobody will ever be happy with the voting system, but how about this suggestion:
"Force" anyone reading an article to actively decide not to vote.
If they leave the page without voting, pop up and tell 'em "Thanks for reading, your feedback will really be appreciated. You can vote 1-5 or N/A - where N/A means this really wasn't appropriate for my needs or IO landed here by mistake.
Personally I would default the vote to 3 - but the N/A readers might just accept that which would skew the ranking so it may be better to default to N/A - but making it easy to vote (like maybe 5 buttons) would be imperative - with a text box for any comments (which, I suppose, could be mandatory under certain circumstances)
If everyone is forced to vote this would hopefully go some way to getting a more accurate feel of how useful/good the article is?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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This will generate a lot of uninformed votes from those who go to an article via search, scan the first few lines, and then leave when they realise it's not what they were after.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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True - but if they are all "N/A" votes - effectively a no-vote - then no change - but I would think it would also generate more votes in general which would help the "my mates all voted 5" situation
If (like me) your first thought is that it would hinder the awesome articles (like mine  ) well, I'm not sure that's the case - a user taking the option to change from N/A to a vote would at least be thinking about what they are voting for - and if that brings the votes down a bit then that's democracy at work!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Obviously I'm concerned about your awesome articles. That's really all this discussion comes down to, right?
My issue with a flood of N/As is that popular (by search engine standards) articles will have their ranking pulled towards 3.0. That's not exactly fair or accurate. Or desirable.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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The N/A wouldn't count as a vote 'score' - so its the same as just closing the page without voting - but just gives that little push toward actually making an effort.
(just thought too, one should not be able to bookmark or download without voting!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Ah, so a prompt, a nag, more than anything.
Hmmm. Interesting.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I like the idea, but I would change "N/A" to "I don't feel informed enough to vote yet" or something along those lines.
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Yes - I agree - needs to be explained.
Some wordsmith needs to come out with a succint one-liner that sums up all the legit reasons not to vote, that pushes the user to vote, but doesn't make them feel bad if they genuinely don't want to...
"Yo! Just not my thang, bro'" maybe?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I saw your post in my inbox & thought it was a CCC!
Yes - as I posted elsewhere today, when I am looking for some information, I might find an article, read it, then get off and use the information - forgetting to vote at all - so that nag would make me do it
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Would it remember you already voted?
Also, one of the reasons I so rarely vote is that, while I can recognize that an article is bad (and I report them so), I usually don't feel qualified to declare an article good, so I leave it up to others who know the topic better. I'd be hitting N/A on everything or, better yet, just closing the tab.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Would it remember you already voted?
Yes - but allow a vote to be changed.
I agree with your reasons for not voting somewhat - but not taking the trouble to vote on an article you have actually read is "bad" - your vote should (IMHO) reflect how well you thought the article explained itself to you
It is, after all, your vote.
I try to vote on every article I read these days - but I confess I sometimes just go off elsewhere and forget - something like what I suggest would remind me to take the time to think about it and cast my vote.
PIEBALDconsult wrote: I leave it up to others who know the topic better.
I can see where you are coming from - but isn't that like not voting for a politician because you think others know better than you - whereas in fact the ones that are voting are "not necessarily those best informed"? So the voting score is worse for your lack of input.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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_Maxxx_ wrote: I can see where you are coming from - but isn't that like not voting for a politician because you think others know better than you - whereas in fact the ones that are voting are "not necessarily those best informed"? So the voting score is worse for your lack of input.
I agree with that.
I have noticed it when voting for the monthly competition. There are articles that have a good score and a a mid to high amount of votes, where I say... OK, I am not really fit in this thema, but I don't feel like it deserves it.
There are other times where I have being looking for some information. I come to articles where the score is high and I have read them just to say... what a time loss  
I find the system is very good, the use of it is what needs to be improved. And that is quite difficult to be solved in the server side.
In the old times (or currently still by some members):
- I vote 5 if it is well written, if it says me something I didn't know and says it in a way I can understand and so on
- Maybe voting 3 for articles that are not bad, where it is easy to see that the author has invest a lot of work, but didn't get the good direction or there are performance / security issues that can be solved with a bit more work.
- I vote 1 for articles where it is easy to see that the biggest goal of the author was just to "publish in CP" and not to teach or to share something useful / cool.
But nowadays it seems more like:
I give 5 because it is politically correct and maybe afterwards I get a 5 from them.
I give 5 because I have found a buggy version to do "copy + paste" in my project and it more or less does what I need and it saves me some self-work and my boss thinks "wow, he is fast"
I give 5 because it is a "friend" of mine
Sad
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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_Maxxx_ wrote: isn't that like not voting for a politician
No, this this isn't that important.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: this isn't that important.
Taking CodeProject as a microcosm, I think it is. CP relies on its reputation as a source of quality information - accurate appraisal of articles is what helps drive people via search engines to the best articles, and CP's customers are its raison d'etre as it derives income from advertising (I believe - or maybe Chris is just an eccentric multi-millionaire...)
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I prefer a "Article is useful" vote, and nothing else.
Once voted as such, it cannot be undone.
This would solve all of the voting problems we have. Reputation points would be based on the rep of the user voting on the article (like it is now). The existing votes can easily be translated, such that 4 or 5 votes would be considered a vote for "useful", and 1-3 would be removed altogether.
A system such as this should eliminate most - if not all - of the whining from article authors.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Reputation points would be based on the rep of the user voting on the article (like it is now). The existing votes can easily be translated, such that 4 or 5 votes would be considered a vote for "useful", and 1-3 would be removed altogether.
A system such as this should eliminate most - if not all - of the whining from article authors.
Then we would end having overinflated scores in articles that don't even deserve it.
If something like that has to be done... then I would remove the full vote system. The indicators that I currently use to see about the popularity are not the votes (since the system is a bit ill), but the downloads and the bookmarks.
Without votes... Problem with rep hunters, problem with poor quality articles being upvoted by minions or puppets and some other would be solved at once
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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But the voting helps people find articles that are worth a damn vs the ones that aren't.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Ideally yes.
Pity is that it is not actually being used as it should.
Note that I am not blaming the system, I am sad that the people uses it wrong. What I wanted to mean is that if we really want to get ride of those people and go back to a higher average in quality, then those CV-hunters dreaming of "I have 30 articles published and 50k+ rep points in Codeproject" should get reduced.
Edit:
As example have a look to the article pointed by mika 2 threads above, and he is not one of the worst I have seen with 50+ votes of 5 and / or rates over 4.5
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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But that's the point: the voting system should help people find the good vs the bad, but if a crappy article is posted and the author's friends, family and debtors vote for it, then we have a crappy article with a huge up-vote count. Another article that's brilliant but written by an introvert and gets only "natural" upvotes may have less upvotes than the weighted article.
The worst bit being: there's no way for anyone to do anything about the crappy article if there's no downvoting. We could, if we chose to go the StackOverflow route, simply delete any article that was below a certain threshold.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Interesting, I take it as that option 2[^] isn't a viable option then.
But I don't think option one is the only option, even if it's the most probable one if you really want people to actually vote more.
So what alternatives are there? Well, one I can think of goes together with making reports public. Make everything public.
Then you would let people see how everyone votes which makes retaliation voting/reporting less likely to happen as soon as people understand it's not anonymous.
It goes both ways and will become self regulating after a short time of "chaos"
The drawback is of course that downvoting is still less likely to happen in general so the skewed result will still remain, but at least less so.
This should probably be combined with a rep limit of say 1000 points for being able to report at all, to limit the usability of sock puppet accounts.
That said, I still believe anonymizing votes is the best way to get more votes in general.
And we just need to accept the fact that upvoting by friends and downvoting based on grudges will never go away.
modified 14-Jan-15 8:15am.
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Making votes fully public is where I'm leaning. It won't help us decide who's a sock puppet / friend, but it may make people think a little before random downvoting, and I'd probably combine it with the removal of the need to comment on a downvote.
A refined option: you get to see who voted if you yourself agree to have your votes made public. That way you choose. Still mulling this one over but it has it's pros/cons.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I believe the refined option is not very functional.
If you have Adam who decides to opt in, and Bob who decides to opt out, and they both decides to report each other.
Will they both see each others report despite Bob opting out, or will both see nothing despite Adam opting in?
All or nothing I say. I'm content both ways, but don't make it halfbaked.
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Yeah - it's leaky.
My thinking was that those who care about downvotes would be given the choice to see who downvoted them, but that would in turn mean their downvotes (and upvotes) would be visible. This may give them pause to retaliate with votes of their own.
Of course the only way this works is if you don't allow someone to opt-out of public votes once they opt in, and it also means that they could then just setup sock puppets to attack a downvoter.
The sock puppet angle kinda kills most of the solutions one can come up with, unless you then say "no votes until X rep points" which then means you punish all new members for the sake of a very, very small minority.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: unless you then say "no votes until X rep points" which then means you punish all new members for the sake of a very, very small minority.
There are already a lot of rep based access rights in place, I don't see this as a dealbreaker. But I would limit it to reports, it should be ok for low reps to vote, they anyway have a lower weight as it is already.
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