[defrost]

It will modify the behaviour of some of the people who vote.

Which is the point.

The interesting part is whether they can group out users who are more predisposed to upvote violence, develop a measure of tendancy, and observe a change for some subgroup.

If the admin want to downplay violent content they have a range of options, eg: if they have suitable measures then those who do not modify behaviour can have their upvotes diluted or negated on violent content or any other actions up to shadowbanning or beyond(?).

Reddit literally has a decade+ database on how people vote.

[duxup]

I honestly don’t think it will. People vote on instinct, they aren’t thinking of the rules, they won’t.

This is a hall monitor type solution where the only thing they can think of is to give the hall monitor permission to use the stick more.

[defrost]

Imagine a thousand people that upvote a specific bit of imagery that all get warnings.

Are you saying that they are all sheep that act in unison and not a single one would react differently to another?

How does that notion compare to, say, results from marketing tests on groups that trial various strategies and look at the spectrum of reactions in order to tune a campaign going forward?