At first glance I thought this sounded like a terrible idea, but hear me out...
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Right now I think we have a different vibe than Reddit. The minimum requirements to vote are converting lurkers into contributors, which gives us fresh new (and imho higher quality) voices in these discussions. But what happens further down the line, when:
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People pass the threshold and no longer have any incentive to contribute, reverting back to lurkers?
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The number of users who can vote grow enough to where it's trivial for a new user to come in and reap sufficient comment points?
For the first issue, there might be some mitigation in that habits are formed, but I don't think that's reliable.
For the second issue, we're already seeing plenty of threads saying "Hi, I'm new and trying to get upvotes, please upvote me." There will always be people who will upvote these, and I don't see a good way to stop them. And if the upvote requirements stay static, it'll just be easier and easier for people to get them as the userbase grows and a greater number of people are willing to throw free upvotes their way without meaningful contribution.
One possible solution could be diminishing upvote credit. Total up your karma into a separate number that continually goes down by x# of points each week, and you have to keep it above 0 to keep voting.
Another possible solution would be to make the requirements periodic - get 10 upvotes on your comments every month, or something to that effect. If everyone has similar requirements, I think the deluge of "please upvote me so I can keep voting" would be rendered less effective.
What do you all think? Or maybe I've just been reading too much Heinlein (starts at 0:32).
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[–] Andrew_L ago (edited ago)
Perhaps it would do both our systems good if we allow for unbacked/fiat votes and a separate algorithm that calculates it.