SCP and CCP no longer play any role in your ability do submit links/start discussions or vote. You can now downvote as soon as you create an account. Please note that you can only vote once from a single IP address (voting IP addresses are stored encrypted and we have no way to reverse this encryption). We are still tweaking this so please report if you notice anything unusual about voting.
Edit: The biggest reason for this change is that I noticed how multiple subverses had "please upvote me" threads where their members were able to gain 300+ CCP in matter of minutes. At the same time, regular users would need weeks or even months to reach this level. That essentially broke the old system and we need something new. Perhaps requiring new accounts to create 100 comments in 100 different subs before being able to vote 100 times? If you have an idea, please feel free to share it, I'm all ears.
Edit 2: Here is an example of the problem I am trying to tackle:
- a large corporation which has hundreds or thousands of employees, comes over to Voat and pushes their advertising links to the frontpage because upvotes are not restricted for new accounts as much as downvotes
- at the same time, majority of Voat users today does not have the ability to downvote or has restricted downvotes
Edit 3: This is now reverted to the way it was. I need to think this through.
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lawofchaos ago
Oh great, the people that come here and fucking whine about not being able to downvoat have won. Awesome. Starting to like this place less and less every day now..
So basically the only difference between Voat and Reddit now is that Voat has collected all of Reddit's trash that no one wanted around anyway. Good job guys, bravo.
Atko ago
Nobody complained to me about anything, I caught manipulation in several subs with "please upvote me so I can downvote others" threads. Did you even read the text of this announcement since your comment is completely oblivious to the issue I'm raising?
lawofchaos ago
I can kinda get the reasoning why the old system didn't work as well as one would have liked it to but does taking that system away altogether fix the problem? At least people had to make a slight effort before, even if it was just through shit posting in FPH. Now, instead of even needing to make a thread saying "please upvoat me so I can downvoat others", people can simply go straight to it without ever needing to participate in the slightest.
Sometimes I wish it wasn't so friendly and open here so that the people who participated in that sort of stuff could have just been outright banned for making a joke of things.
I understand your reasoning, but either way the assholes win. At least before it wasn't as easy as simply making an account.
Atko ago
Thank you for taking the time to comment. The problem was just that - it was easy to upvote as soon as you make a new account but hard to downvote (and only hard to downvote for individuals and not to organized groups). Restrictions must be equal for both upvotes and downvotes, otherwise we're stuck with an echo chamber for organized groups.
lawofchaos ago
Ah there I agree fully. Since I first came here I thought that the restrictions should be equal. But that seems kinda impossible because if no one can upvoat or downvoat without any CCP then no new user will ever get out of the starting block, other then those who already cheat. Apologies for the wording of my first comment, I'm not disliking this place more every day, that was just an over reaction. Personally I liked the system the way it was but perhaps it only really worked properly while this place was still so much smaller. What worries me so much is that people are joining this website these days not because they want to be here but because their shitty bigot sub was banned on Reddit. That is the only reason and one that I have heard straight from the mouths (keyboards) of some of these people. And since these bigots have fled here from Reddit the whole voating culture has been slowly changing from one that rewarded participation and punished trolling to one that uses these little arrows as agree/disagree buttons. I fear that this will turn that slow change into a rapid one.
But clearly there is no simple solution to any of this. Thank you for all your hard work, mr. Atko. I, as a user can only begin to imagine what that must entail. Hopefully an alternative solution can be figured out soon.
Atko ago
I understand your concerns. I just spent the last 5 hours reading the comments in this thread, replying to as many people as I could and writing down interesting and constructive ideas many people had about how to improve the voting system and I hope to roll out something better soon.
lawofchaos ago
And that's what I think I like about this place the most. Even though you don't have to and no one expects it of you, you take the time to listen to what the users have to say, listen to suggestions and often implement them and generally just be awesome about it.
At least that's one thing that I can rest easy about. From what I've seen in my time here so far I can be completely certain that solutions are being considered and worked on and that this will all be sorted out soon. The only possible solution I could think of personally is to supply those restrictions per subverse rather then globally so that if you make 100ccp in your obscure sub, good for you, now you can downvoat in that sub but you'll still have to earn your points in another one. I know that moderators can choose this already but I think it should be a standard by default. Although I'm sure that would just come with a whole new set of problems. It'll be interesting to see what ends up happening. Thank you for taking the time to explain this further.