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 ago
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
the_magic_man 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
Rakosman 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.
the_magic_man 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.