[Xurinos]

I think this is a promising line of thinking, the idea that there should be more than one kind of vote. There is confusion as to what the single up/down means, and this is not helped by the fact that the single karma value actually matters for things (the ability to downvote at all or the level of obscuration of the comment). It is certainly not helpful if everyone has a different opinion of what that arrow should mean.

From a UI perspective, there are tradeoffs. Multiple vote options means better sorting, more thorough meaning. It also means more confusion and more work.

Also, instead of single vote tallies, has there been social experimentation with preferential voting systems on comments? (This still has the problem of needing more than one flavor of preference.)

[waqf]

Preferential voting systems? You mean like people voting on whether you or lwhi gave the better answer to my comment?

[Xurinos]

Yeah. But maybe with multiple votes, we already effectively have this. The problem is that those votes are counted internally not as preference order but as total number of votes, adding to a user's general karma score.