submitted 6.8 years ago by PuttItOut

First off, I need to say that I know I’ve let a lot of you down (if not all). I know I’ve not met your expectations of an admin or a leader. I have no excuses as even I feel this way about myself. I won’t make attempts for empathy, I will only acknowledge the truth, and it is such.

Life is full of surprises. You can be rich one minute and living out of your car the next. You can be healthy one year and a regular in the doctor’s office the following. You can have life figured out only to discover you know nothing in the end. The only constant in life is change. My life is not the same it was when I first met @Atko and started working on Voat. I have much less time, I have a bit less fight in me (getting old does this), I have a bit more struggle in life. These life changes have forced me to put Voat on the back burner (which hurts me).

Let’s get real

When it comes to “Free Speech” sites, I once believed that people cared enough about the value of free speech to make “clone” sites like Voat (or gab) successful. I’ve come to realize, and have said before, that this single factor isn’t enough. People simply do not value this right enough to make a “clone” successful.

You can see this with Voat. A majority of Voat users still use Reddit. People use Reddit for posting and interacting when it comes to PC topics (4 wheel drive subs, movie subs, book subs, etc.). They use Voat to post the things they can’t post on Reddit. This creates an imbalance where Voat becomes increasingly un-PC, while Reddit gets the neutral content (I know even the most hardened ideologue has a level of civility). The end result is this imbalance drives people away as people wear out when confronted by content like this over the long run.

I don’t know the solution to this, and I am not attempting to pass blame, I am simply stating a truth that has to considered.

What makes a clone not a clone?

Why I mention this in the first place is that I know a “clone” site will not become sustainable based on Freedom of Speech so I’ve tried to revolutionize the “community” aspect of Voat by providing a way the community itself can “vote” on policy (rules, mods, anything actually). It's the future capability of this feature-set that is appealing. A community can become self-sustaining and self-manageable through this new technology. After all, the draw of sites like Voat or Reddit is that it is community-oriented vs. self-oriented.

And I’m going to finish it. I’m going to finish it for me. I’m going to finish it for you. I’m going to finish it for Voat. I’m going to finish it for Freedom of Speech (because I still believe in this ideal).

I’m going to finish it because a “clone” site with no differentiation but policy will never succeed.

So Voat, please forgive me for my shortcomings if you can, and expect my work to continue on making Voat a truly unique website.

Soon.

P.S. Downtime today was because of a full disk (Thanks @derram for letting me know). We had an issue from about a year ago that inflated some files to crazy sizes and I took the time today to deal with this. So the next downtime should be something completely different! Yay!

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

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adfasfawfad 6.8 years ago

You can see this with Voat. A majority of Voat users still use Reddit. People use Reddit for posting and interacting when it comes to PC topics (4 wheel drive subs, movie subs, book subs, etc.). They use Voat to post the things they can’t post on Reddit. This creates an imbalance where Voat becomes increasingly un-PC, while Reddit gets the neutral content (I know even the most hardened ideologue has a level of civility). The end result is this imbalance drives people away as people wear out when confronted by content like this over the long run.

This is, indeed very true in future I'll make sure to post more OC content on voat and more content linked from various sites

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citrion 6.8 years ago

I think people make the mistake of assuming that each site lives in its own isolated bubble, but that's not really true. In reality, all of these related sites pull an audience from the same universe of people, so what's going on on one site reflects on all of the sites, because it's got the same fundamental core of people behind it. If your business model is based on opinion-shaping services and you operate by dredging up the most shady and thus most pliant audiences and giving them a respectable veneer (Reddit), you're going to get a site that looks neutral but your audience will be infused with all sorts of who-knows-what. If your site is dedicated to free speech (Voat), you won't necessarily change be able to change the nature of the audience, but you'll get a much clearer picture of what that audience looks like. And it's basically the same audience. So when Putt complains about how Voat is dry of substantial commentary and filled with imbalanced content, it's less of a condemnation of Voat, and more a matter of shining a light on the crappiness of the environment that Reddit has created. Voat is a niche site which nevertheless is influential in shaping people's opinions? Well, that's because Reddit is more niche than people realize, yet more influential than people realize in shaping opinions. It's understandably a frustrating situation to be in, because we'd want to ask, "what can we do to make Voat better?," when the answer is that it isn't entirely about us and what we're doing.

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Darl_Von_Kibble 6.8 years ago

We definitwly need more Orange County content on Voat.

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TallShortSkinnyFatM 6.8 years ago

Same, but it's a diff content set here. Some kids NEED to stay on reddit and some of us need to go to reddit to help them there so they don't come here. To me, they serve diff needs and aren't competitors. I truly think that reddit needs us as we are but could be wrong. Think of it as reddit as pg13 or rated R and we are rated M for M-mature audiences only.

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1812-was-not-a-tie 6.8 years ago

I posted a couple of normal things in MapPorn or something and got no welcome, so I gave up on that.

Most of the user base thinks this site exists solely to "name the Jew", and are turning it into an echo gas chamber. Ironically cross this will ruin the site in the long run, as Putt has just pointed out.

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Crensch 6.8 years ago

"I started my diet, but didn't see immediate results, so I stopped and ate a tub of ice cream"

You think @Empress had an easy time starting /v/TraditionalWives here? The place was hammered CONSTANTLY for a long time, but she persisted.

@JuiceTown made a subverse where he posted links and images constantly, and now that he's mostly gone, his subverse is still being used by others who make good submissions.

You sound like a quitting faggot. A blackpill agent. Lock yourself in your bathroom with a crushed up peach seed, and pour water on it, faggot.

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1812-was-not-a-tie 6.8 years ago

I got much better things to do than to devote time to you.

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12967117? 6.8 years ago

Ah man, we really were hammered non-stop. @Hecho even started a sub called "TraditionaiiWives" but used an upper case 'i' which made the name of his sub indistinguishable from ours. Further- he made it a PORN sub!!! He stole our CSS and even changed his name as creator to mine. The only way to find out that it's actually him is to click the name Empress under 'created by'. 10/10 Troll.

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hecho 6.8 years ago

im a genius, arent i?

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Rakosman 6.8 years ago

genius, faggot; one of those.

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the_magic_man 6.8 years ago

The problem is, any new user with an alternative viewpoint is downvoted so he can't post threads and gets limited to a few comments a day. So we're left with a "gas the kikes" echo chamber which just gets worse

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Rakosman 6.8 years ago

This is exactly how I feel. I can't even recommend Voat to people because you can't browse anything on the front page hardly without seeing shit about jews and blacks. It is "toxic," so to speak. And the response is always "well we don't want them anyway" which isn't an invalid reaction per se, it just means growth will be slow.

More and more I find myself thinking about using Reddit for more niche subs because there just aren't enough people here to support them here; it's a lot of work to check all the little things you like when there's only a couple posts a month from the same few people.

I like it here, and I like that it's small enough to not have circle jerks of inside jokes and to have a chance at getting your comments seen, but in the time I've been here very little, if any, growth has happened in the small subs.

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the_magic_man 6.8 years ago

That's the problem, normal users for non political subs will never use voat. It's too far gone. @atko wanted to change the ccp limits, @PuttItOut seems happy to keep it the way it is, he's comfortable with the current user base. It's not healthy the way voat has grown into a far right only message board. If you build up a good ccp to allow you to post alternative opinion and then post that opinion on a popular board, all you comments across all boards will be brigaded so you lose your ability to post. Same people who downvote you will be posting about how important free speech is.