Now that I have your attention, I have a confession to make: I lied.
Well sort of… because Voat 2.0 doesn’t exist yet, but it will in the future, and this thread is the first in a series of Quarterly Reviews we will be doing to get your feedback on what we need, what we need to improve, and the direction we need to move as a company and as a community.
I can finally announce that Voat’s features (software-wise) are now in the ballpark of a semi-functional platform. I’m not saying Voat is perfect, nor am I saying the features are mature, rather I am saying that we are nearing "acceptable" as a basic functioning platform.
But a basic functioning platform was never our end goal, it was just the first milestone we needed to hit. Now that we are approaching this milestone we need to lay out our future direction.
Voat doesn’t want to be a “clone” any longer. We want to stand up and proclaim our uniqueness. We want to put our differences on display and stake our future on them. Voat can’t survive without redefining ourselves, without evolving into something bigger, something better, something unique and new.
This is the post where we get to dream big, have no boundaries, no constraints, and live in world where everything is possible.
Hypothetical
You have an army of programmers, mountains of cash to burn, and you are the only board member: What does Voat 2.0 look like?
Thread is marked Anon
Canary
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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8450741? ago
Make it so that the default comment sorting isn't based on up-downvoats, but up+downvoats. This would allow the most controversial opinions to be at the very top
8451493? ago
How does this combat spam?
I liked the idea at first, but thinking about it more this removes the most effective tools end users have against spam.
8451987? ago
But then you're using the same tool used for hiding spam to hide opinions that you don't like. You're literally saying that downvoating is effective for hiding spam, but don't see that it hides different opinions as well? We need to embrace that downvoating is used for expressing disagreement and find a different solution for taking care of spam
8457431? ago
I get where your coming from and your not even wrong.
But I'm not sure it's a solvable problem, you might be on to something but you still have to solve the spam problem.
If there was a cost to posting it could work for instance, you would prevent spam in the same way as the proof of work ideas for email that ended up spawning Blockchain technology.
Imposing a cost for posting has tons of other downsides though.
I think the most interesting aspect of this general idea is that expressing disagreement increases the exposure of a post. What needs to be solved is how to otherwise limit spam while preventing anti-spam measures from being used to silence alternative opinions.
8459270? ago
There's a pretty easy solution. Give people a report spam button with a little popup indicating that it's only to be used in cases of actual spam when its clicked. After 3 reports of spam all janitors are notified and can remove the post. If users misuse the button, they lose access to it. Pretty simple, fair, and effective.