Been thinking about the voting system lately and how it inevitably kills in-depth discussion in growing communities.
Every sub/community follows the same trajectory: starts small with passionate users sharing quality content/discussion → grows in popularity → memes and low-effort posts flood in → actual discussion gets buried or downvoted.
I’m guilty of this too tbh. I realized I use upvotes/downvotes as personal “like/dislike” buttons rather than judging relevance to the community.
Here’s my hot take:
- Voting should be restricted to subscribed users only
- Downvotes should be capped at a fraction of total upvotes a user gives out
The clearest example of this failure is gonewild. The demographics mean male content (which is 100% allowed) gets mass-downvoted into oblivion while female content dominates the front page. It’s not about quality or relevance anymore - it’s just a popularity contest.
Anyone else feel like the voting system needs a complete rethink?
Lemmynsfw solved this by disabling downvotes. I don’t think memes were a problem there.
An alternative is strong moderation to keep off-topic comments and posts out.
My instance disables downvotes and it’s much better.
I really think removing downvotes or requiring the downvoter to explain the downvote would make communities better.
Is there any way to stop the mods from going mad with power?