this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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"Voting" and "discussion" are separate things. The old forums did not have voting but still had polarization, personal attacks, hellthreads, etc.
The problem is that Reddit/Facebook turned "voting" from a tool meant to measure "quality" (e.g, this post is relevant to the community, this comment does not add to the discussion) into a tool to measure "popularity" (I agree with this, so I vote up. I don't like this, so I downvote).
Either get rid of voting altogether, or let's bring back a culture where "votes" are meant to signal quality.
Redditors did that, rather than reddit I'd argue. Still the same result of becoming a far less useful heuristic though.
Not really sure how to "fix" a system like that, which depends on the masses to do something correctly. They... don't.
If users are the problem and the platform encourages/enables them to behave like that, then the problem is the platform. Redditors act that way because the system incentivizes it.
What alternatives to votes would you propose to handle this better? Because I have no doubt the same thing will happen here too...
It's just how people work, especially when things get heated. That said, perhaps that's a poor example as a heated discussion isn't necessary a helpful/constructive one...
I already said: upvotes only, remove downvotes, votes are public. If we don’t have downvotes public voting is not as important. But if we insist on keeping them, then yes it should be public
We also need people to be more accepting of stricter/heavier-handed moderation, which is a hard sell.
We can fix that by having moderators that can establish clear guidelines and show enough authority and can be trusted by the community. And yes, if the guidelines include something like:
Then the mods would be completely justified to call out users who are drive-by downvoting.
Or some self entitled 3rd party admin would do that just because they'd feel like people owed them explanations.
Hey, do I owe you anything for all the space I'm taking in your head or am I still living rent-free?
If you did it would not be rent free, or would it, einstein. But no worry, i don't think about you, just this topic and your enthusiasm for it triggered my reply :)
Have a downvote for going off topic and "personal".
You are the one pontificating in my comment, and I am the one going personal. Seems like your reasoning is as good as your reading comprehension.
But hey, thanks for stopping by!
But... we had those on reddit. I didn't see many actual examples of the "moderator gone power crazy" stereotype that is so often echoed there (especially by people who fully deserved the moderator action they received).
The issue wasn't that the rules were clear. The issue was that people refused to read them in the first place, and became hyper-defensive and obstinate whenever they were called out on it, even by moderators.
No moderator went on to call out users who were down voting for disagreement, because this data is not public on Reddit.
(Score: 5, Insightful)
Meta-moderation and multi-dimensional voting. We were happier with slashdot and we took it for granted.