User blog comment:Smash The Echidna/SFW Winter Awards 2016/@comment-1942179-20151228174015

After observing certain voting habits, I am considering changing a rule.

Voting Rule #3: Users are required to make at least one sentence describing the reasoning behind their vote, unless they are neutral. Comments may vary, but please do not simply put a +1 or -1 with nothing following it.

The striked line is what I plan to change. Which means that users will be required to make at least one sentence describing the reason behind their neutral votes as well.

My reasoning is simple. The SFW Awards have become a popular place to get constructive criticism from various other users at a time. But because of the current rule, there are many people getting disatisfying feedback with simple, one-two worded neutral votes of "Meh." and "No Comment". For a person seeking to improve, being mediocre is very distressing. When you're good, you know that you're on the right track. Bad? You know there's more work to be done, and have some semblance of an idea on how to get better. But average? Nobody tells you anything useful. You don't have any bad points to improve on, but you don't have any good points to tell you you've done well.

In a nutshell that's how people feel when their stuff gets voted neutral with little to no reasoning. There are at least 3 people this season I can name off-hand who've felt this way, myself excluded. I understand that this rule would make things go a bit slower, but it was never my intention to have neutral votes be exploitable shortcuts anyway.

Now before I go and implement this rule, I want to hear what you all have to say about this.