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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8455758? ago
Add Optional Messages to Link Posts
Allow Link Posts to have an option message in the same way that Discussion Posts do. This is something that the "other site" doesn't have but will be a great addition for people who want to add content to their images or news or YouTube videos without being forced to add a comment which quickly becomes buried.
Voat Polling
I think some polls would benefit by only allowing users to vote once and only allowing "legitimate" users (perhaps accounts older than one month with certain SCP and CCP levels).
This would greatly hinder spammers and brigaders from artificially invalidating the results.
Other polls may be just for fun and wouldn't require such strict constrains.
Voat polling could also play a huge role in the Subverse Request process and a great way for communities to vote to remove cancer-mods without having the results invalidated by brigaders.
Revise the Subverse Request Process
(i.e. stop handing over great subs to SaneGoat to ruin)
Witnessing the Voat community reel in disgust as SaneGoat and other cancer-mods abuse their communities as personal, emotional glory-holes is not OK.
A lot of people devote a lot of effort into building up successful subs and it's an insult to the entire Voat community to see their efforts disrespected when great subs are handed over to known cancer-mods, spammers, trolls and brigaders to ruin.
Mods who delete content and ban users because of hurt feelings are unacceptable. Censoring a community is not a valid form of free speech in the same way that bombing a sporting event is not a valid form of religious expression.
Allow Comment History Searching
This would make it much easier to locate content from older discussions. I use DuckDuckGo to search my comment history, however not many people would want to mess around like that.
Revise the Hot sorting algorithm
Many people may not appreciate this suggestion, however if you've ever modded a smaller subverse, you will quickly appreciate that almost none of your users bother to click the "New" button to see newly added content. They just rely on the default "Hot" filter which unfortunately filters out new content that only has a score of one. This sucks because awesome new content is often hidden from most of the community and if nobody sees it and up-votes it within a few hours, then most of the community will never see it.
This is a pain because the smaller subs benefit greatly from every post.
You'd be amazed how posts "take off" once people can see 'em.
I recommend that "Hot" sorting algorithm be adjusted so new posts are made visible for a few hours, even if they only have a score of one.
Subverse Reporting
It would be nice for mods to get some simple stats on sub activity and subscription numbers over time. Yeah, not everyone would benefit from this but I'd like it... so I guess it would be a very low priority.
8462029? ago
This needs to be a priority. The current algorithm sucks.