Motivation: When I sort by highest score, what I really want is that by default, what other people found the most useful is at the top, because I'm in a mode where I want to find things that will be useful to me. But, I upvote the answer that is useful to me, and that I want to see again if I revisit the same Q&A page (which is not necessarily the top answer(s)). I downvote the answer that is the opposite of useful to me, and that I don't want to see again if I revisit the same Q&A page (which is not necessarily the lowest-scoring answer(s)). I don't cast votes on the rest. Time passes, and I revisit the Q&A. When I am in this mode, I want to see anything I previously upvoted at the very top of the sorting.
Implementation proposal: Add a new sort option similar to "Highest Score", but:
- (no change) order non-deleted posts before deleted posts
- (change) to break ties, order by the vote direction the client user has cast: client-upvoted posts go before posts with no client vote, which go before client-downvoted posts
- (no change) to break ties, order by post score
- at this point, I don't have a strong opinion. can use the current norm of random order to break remaining ties.
Nitty gritty details:
- I don't particularly care what happens for deleted answers- whether they are forced to the bottom (taking "actual" top-level sort priority), or whether they have sorting priority lower than what vote the viewer cast.
- For the sake of not doing sudden page relayouts that might disorient the reader, it would probably be better to not re-order until the page is reloaded (though I assume this is the current convention anyway).
- I would really like for this to be an available feature for logged-in users below 15 rep (without full voting privileges) as well, but might be another can of worms (see also bottom paragraph of this answer post of mine). The system keeps track of these votes (and I'm guessing they internally keep track of the client's IP or some sort of ID cookie). If so, use that to provide value to the user.
Note: I learned later that this has basically been requested already on MSO: Show answers that I previously upvoted at the top of the answers list.
