This is just a quick message for anyone visiting Voat for the first time.
We have a known blocking issue in our code base. This means that the site is being a spoiled rotten no good son of... often will toggle off for about 10 seconds and then turn itself back on.
It truly is the most annoying bug you can imagine and we are just so happy to have it along for the ride. To make matters worse, response times are very poor right do to traffic.
So heads up, it's a little like a goat track around here right now.
For two guys with fulltime jobs it is not easy to dedicate the time to find such an obscure bug. As we often do, we have to apologize.
Many apologies everyone. We hate it too.
What we don't have at Voat:
- Server Farms
- Engineers (or even employees for that matter)
- Infrastructure budget
- Marketing department
- Salaries ;)
What we do have:
- Freedom of Speech
- Annoying bugs
- Goats
Anyways, just wanted to say welcome to any new people and we hope that what we have outweighs what we don't have.
If you have the means, please consider donating. Every bit helps and means a lot to both of us. https://store.voat.co/donations
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
view the rest of the comments →
TheGunslinger ago
I need upvoats to be able to upvoat?
Rotteuxx ago
You need 100ccp bfr being a vetted goat.
So get 100 upgoats on you comments & you're clear to fully participate.
We make our shills work hard on getting alt accounts going here at Voat.
ginx2666 ago
It also makes brigading magnitudes time worse in consequences, but sure, let's ignore the flaws.
Rotteuxx ago
How so ?
ginx2666 ago
Okay, first of all: upvote score (or CCP/SCP) should be meaningless. Both reddit's and voat's scoring system is a glorified popularity contest. People upvote what they like/agree with, and downvote what they don't like/disagree with, regardless of it being relevant, on topic, or contributing to conversation. This is harsh truth, it will never change, deal with it.
Giving community the means to restrict/silence someone based on their popularity ranking (below certain score you have limited votes and posts per day) is absolutely the most retarded thing under the sun. It not only does not prevent brigading (which subs like fph engage in, one of the reasons fph got banned on reddit - same methods of brigading as srs, but unluckily fat fuck reddit admins sympathize with srs and not fph), it makes it valid way to silence people.
Even worse - in worst case scenario it could be used to halt influx of new users during exodus. It's only a proof of concept, but I've managed to streamline account creation process, and write python script that upvotes comments made by listed accounts. This solves problem of getting 100CCP to get full posting/voting privileges. Now, what I (armed with shitty internet connection with dynamic IP, and a single PC) can do with an array of accounts ready to vote? Well, for example target a single new account, find its first post, and instantly downvote it into restrictions. Boom - that's one new user instantly discouraged from posting because of not only apparent community backlash (which can be ignored if attributed to brigading), but also their account being restricted, which is only admins' fault for putting restrictions like those.
And that's only what I could do. Imagine an organized group, one with resources (more machines to execute account creation and validation script), time (to spread account creation process in time, avoiding tripping any flood alerts, if they exist) and skill (I wrote shitty python script using my own almost nonexistent python knowledge and "how to python" query in google - imagine someone competent attempting that) to scale up what I've envisioned, one that owns voat's competitor, one who sees voat as thorn in its side, and would benefit from it not gaining new users.
All because admins decided that popularity contest should matter.
Y8goKTH959VCLKty8xIz ago
Damn. Ignorance is bliss