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I've thought long and hard about the "voting" mechanism, and I am really, really torn. Tons of people writing "+1" is a very aggressive voting mechanism. It is

I've thought long and hard about the "voting" mechanism, and I am really, really torn. Tons of people writing "+1" is a very aggressive voting mechanism. It is noisy and loud, which I think is a desirable trait for some issues on open source projects. There are lots of projects with awesome developers that listen to their users and are commendable souls. There are also lots of projects with developers that don't give a shit about what their users want. Yes, yes, "if you don't like it, write your own", but that simply isn't possible for I'd say most projects out there. And so the +1 comments "voting mechanism" has spawned what I call "the new tyranny of 'locked to contributors'", which itself is a pretty good indicator of the kind of developers running a project. There are projects out there which have issues with huge long chains of +1 comments and enormous bug bounties on BountySource, and for whatever reason, the developers have chosen to ignore the issue, eventually locking discussion to contributors. For me, this is a huge indicator about the developers and the project, and I will generally avoid it if at all possible. The reason I'm on the fence is because it will remove this big, loud indicator when there is a star or vote button or whatever. That is much quieter and easier for the developers to simply ignore -- and of course, that's their prerogative, just as it's mine to not use or contribute to a project for the same reason. Anyways, this is my thought process on the whole voting idea.

sondr3 11y ago
But none of that matters for either kind of developer, does it? For the awesome ones it's just noise, and the bad ones will just ignore it. Why does it matter if it is a simple counter? It'll tell you exactly the same information, with a lot less cluster. And it'll help people reading through issues that are littered with it. Personally I think having a +1 counter is a win-win solution. And I detest all the +1 comment spam in issue threads, it is noisy and doesn't contribute to the conversation. Until then, why not create a bot that deletes all +1 posts but edits the main post with a counter of +1s?
- fapjacks 11y ago
  I didn't say anything about it mattering to the project's developers. I said it matters to me because it's an excellent indicator about the quality and personality of the developers working on a project. It helps me to avoid like the plague some janky project where some popular issues languish in 'locked to contributors' when some other project listens to users. Most importantly, when the time comes that I will want to contribute to a project I use by submitting bugfixes or PRs to support other functionality, I know what the climate is like. I'd much rather know to avoid a project before I even decide to use it than six months into embedding it into my production workflow.

sondr3 11y ago

But none of that matters for either kind of developer, does it? For the awesome ones it's just noise, and the bad ones will just ignore it. Why does it matter if it is a simple counter? It'll tell you exactly the same information, with a lot less cluster. And it'll help people reading through issues that are littered with it. Personally I think having a +1 counter is a win-win solution. And I detest all the +1 comment spam in issue threads, it is noisy and doesn't contribute to the conversation. Until then, why not create a bot that deletes all +1 posts but edits the main post with a counter of +1s?

fapjacks 11y ago
I didn't say anything about it mattering to the project's developers. I said it matters to me because it's an excellent indicator about the quality and personality of the developers working on a project. It helps me to avoid like the plague some janky project where some popular issues languish in 'locked to contributors' when some other project listens to users. Most importantly, when the time comes that I will want to contribute to a project I use by submitting bugfixes or PRs to support other functionality, I know what the climate is like. I'd much rather know to avoid a project before I even decide to use it than six months into embedding it into my production workflow.