The upvote system is way too rudimentary to work efficiently. The upvote incite people to post to become more popular, not to post more interesting content.
One metric is not enough, the upvote system combines both "funny" and "interesting" in the same metric. Soon it's the funny content that is pushed to the top, because it's a more common characteristic. But this is how you get memes, emotional and basic screenshot of tweets to the top of the frontpage. And this is probably what you don't want.
So either we add more type of votes,for example two arrows, like an arrow "interesting" and another arrow "funny" or we get rid of them, leaving only the "report" button.
Get rid of reputation too. Some people are already chain downvoting in rage. What good do you think will happen out of a reputation score? People will just spit on you. People are emotional, don't put a gun in their hands.
"The downvote is useful to get rid of antivaxx"? You have a report button for that. And while the downvote button gets rid of antivaxx, it pushes memes to the top, destroying the platform itself. The benefit of the downvote button doesn't compensate for the flaws of the voting system.
The best way for an antivaxx to get his content visible? It is to get blocked! If he is blocked he cannot be downvoted anymore afaik. So it's all good for him. Even the block system doesn't really work as intended and has nasty side effects. Because yes, you won't see it, but other will, and they will adhere, and they will upvote and post more antivaxx stuff, and inspire more antivaxx people.
And I'm not even starting with the bots and scripting systems, which will detect who downvoted you and will "revenge downvote" for you. Do you want all your post to appear with a starting minus 5 attached to it because you posted about veganism 3 months ago? That's what you will get. All it takes is 5 people who don't like the way you talk, and a script. And all your posts will go down the drain as soon as you post them.
--> The system need either higher granularity or we need to get rid of the voting system, and keep only one button: "report", with a mandatory 60 characters comment with it. <--
Yeah, but you have only so many mods that can do so much work. Having some degree of community "moderation" only serms sane to me.
Especially since every community will have its own preferences and interests so in that sense votes will also help to shape a community. Some might not like any memes in their group, some might etc etc
How do you solve the abuse then? How do you solve the manipulations and sabotage that we will inevitably encounter as the instances fill up? You are asking for a tool that bots, ai and trolls will always master better than you.
edit: cool, I'm already at minus 3. Loos like the community has already started to shape up, right ? What do you think of this? Do you think that my post should be sent to the bottom of the front page too? Because that's what is happening with the downvote as it stands now.
My question to you: how do you solve the moderation staffing requirements? Imagine if every post that got downvoted was instead reported.
The solution here assumes that 'report' sends a post to some nether realm where nobody has to deal with it ever again; but all it's doing is passing the buck, and I don't think that's viable unless the moderation team is the same size as the userbase.
If you then mandate a sixty-character comment, then nobody's going to bother reporting anyway, and you end up with a worse problem..