By that I mean that you should be able to drill into post and comment votes, and see the users.
Votes for me are really just a temperature gauge, for me to see if the content I’m posting is appreciated by a community. Other than that, they don’t actually seem to have too much impact on this platform, likely because of scale and algorithm (or lack there of).
That being said, I’ve noticed some mild, weird “turf war” style downvote brigading of community posts. Not botting per say, but deliberate and individual shitty behavior. It’s ultimately no more than a mild annoyance, but I think transparency into the social voting behavior of users would encourage accountability.
Rabble rabble anonymity though!
There’s no actual impact to a user’s anonymity. There’s just less of a free pass to act shitty and not get the boot from a community, under whatever moniker and internet personality type you choose.
How about a user-specific option to hide votes? Like a NSFW toggle.
That way, people who don’t want to deal with votes don’t have to, while those that like anonymous voting can retain that privacy.
There are plenty of times when people want to express disapproval without getting roped into a discussion (see: bad faith actors and other trolls). Sure, there’s always going to be people downvoting things for any reason under the sun, but I see that as noise in an otherwise often useful graph. If you see more noise, then it might help to not see anything.