Upvote brigades are still a thing. Get a bunch of nutters or false flag dickasses upvoting their zany lizardman conspiracies to the top of every comments section. Not to mention the waves of spammers from SRS or wherever. That said, I'm all for putting up stricter limits on the numbers of downvoats you can use per day, or per # of upvoats, or something similar. They shouldn't be dropped all willy-nilly. Would be interesting to tie a downvoat to a comment, come to think of it. Like, you have to at least reply with something. Would mess with the "top comment" algorithm potentially, though, I'm not sure if that runs purely on the voating or also on the comments.
[–] umpaloompa ago
No, the whole point is to have spam, trolls and other stupid shit to be buried so that no one has to deal with it. Unfortunatly people get their feefees hurt if you put controversial content and then downvote it when it could have been an interesting discussion on the controversial topic.
PS Please, if you see an opinion you don't agree with, don't downvote it, just leave it to be or debate with that person and try to have a friendly discussion. The discussion should be to enlighten oneself.
[–] hitamhitam 1 point 0 points 1 point (+1|-1) ago
Or maybe use total point system, like if a post/comment receive 100 upvote and 100 downvote, it will have 200 total point.
With this, people will think twice before they downvote anything.
[–] calyxa 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Copy-pasting a comment I made in a post in v/AskVoat:
I was thinking of a per-subverse parameter, call it "downvoat freeze" so each subverse could specify its own minimum. When a post gets to that point, it should alert the mods because if a post or comment is getting so many downvoats it probably needs some sort of moderator intervention.
That intervention could include - remove the post/comment, remove the downvoat freeze (thus allowing the post to continue sinking no longer limited by the freeze), or do nothing (i.e., allow the post/comment to stay as-is).
[–] umpaloompa ago
This is a good idea if the mods are active 24/7, which is not the case yet. With this we put a lot more pressure on the mods instead of acting as a community.
[–] sng-ign 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
So, the grading scale would only be upvoat or nothing? IDK. So far, people seem to be okay with only upvoats for probation, and then "graduating" to downvoats later.
Maybe upping the upvoat restriction to 1K (1000) may do it, but all it will do is have newbies upvoating everything they see until they can downvoat ...
And thus the cycle continues.
[–] 12_Years_A_Toucan [S] 1 point -1 points 0 points (+0|-1) ago
I just see in the long term it causing more harm than good. Maybe even just removing downvoating for comments? As that is a compromise that still helps with my main concerns of being a disagree button.
@12_Years_A_Toucan // I would prefer blocking users, but the block feature has not been deployed yet on Voat ...
[–] Xelios 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
The main issue with this idea is this:
Let's say I post a news story. It's a hoax that I've made up, but currently there's no proof otherwise and it gains massive traction. 1000 upvoats in an hour. After the hour, it is later revealed that I lied as the manager of the person I made a story about denies it. What's the problem here? The only way people can know that is by viewing the comments (tags too by moderators). The problem with this is a lot of people only read headlines or the actual article itself and ignore the comments. This means it will still gain upvoats. The other problem is that people very rarely revisit threads they've already been to, unless a discussion crops up and they get constant inbox notifications. This means people will not retract their upvoats. Thus, my hoax will now continue to rise, albeit slower, but still substantially.
That's not the end though, this will also cause the rise of a subverse and multiple posts saying "Don't upvoat this/remove your upvaots from this/revealed to be a hoax" which will have all sorts of problems, particularly if they phrase it like the first two as that breaks vote manipulation rules. Reddit became popular because it was self regulating. Downvotes are apart of that. An upvoat system is not self regulating, it is only self promotion system (dunno if that's the right term or phrasing).
[–] 12_Years_A_Toucan [S] 1 point 0 points 1 point (+1|-1) ago
Thoughts on leaving it for post but not comments? Comments are easier to simply call out for being misinformation
[–] boater 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
Downvoting is essential for comments in the instance that a comment contains spoilers in a no-spoiler comment thread in discussions about books, shows, or movies. Using comments to highlight something as spoilers without the ability for the post to become hidden would only make the spoiler worse. This is just one use case.
I think the ideal solution is to simply change the mechanic of the downvote button so that it requires the user to select the subverse specific rule which the comment has violated each time they press the button:
[–] forbidden_arts 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
In addition to spreading misinformation, we're bound to have people who post malicious content (e.g. gore in an inappropriate sub), and it is useful to have a mechanism to suppress those links or comments.
The one drawback is that people can and do use the downvoats to express disagreement, which leads to echo-chambers and circlejerks. Perhaps we could allow the Mods for a particular sub to regulate whether downvoats are allowed instead of making it a site-wide issue?
[–] 12_Years_A_Toucan [S] 1 point 0 points 1 point (+1|-1) ago
Thoughts on leaving it for posts but not comments? Comments are easier to simply call out
[–] Xelios 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Personally, my biggest gripe with the downvoat system is brigading against a user or subreddit or ideology, which sort of fits into disagreement. The problem I have with allowing Mods to regulate only is that it relies on having good mods. Some guy mgiht make a sub that becomes hugely popular but doesn't hire good mods or care to regulate it (we've seen it a lot over at reddit), which means that these sub's will have no effective regulation. It could also lead to suppression of content/censorship.
We'd see threads like "This mod has been suppresing users and censoring any time they try to speak up!" and even though the post would be well intention, you know what would happen because of it? Brigading.
This is why I'm not really for removing the power from the users entirely.
[–] HowAboutShutUp ago
I'm 100% for an idea like this one or similar, I'd like to see a better kind of balance for handling disagree button usage and brigading. I think that the lack of granularity that, for example, reddit has, is what in part led to making every problem look like a nail and shadowbanning like a hammer on that site. Voat already does a lot of stuff in a better or more interesting way; this could be one of them too.