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.

[–] shadowbert 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

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:

Downvotes are not for disagreement. It's fine to downvote if the argument is false or deliberately misleading, but if someone is making a good faith argument that you disagree with, either make a constructive response or simply let it go

Then the mods would be completely justified to call out users who are drive-by downvoting.

[–] shadowbert 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

No moderator went on to call out users who were down voting for disagreement, because this data is not public on Reddit.

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