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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NateThomas1979 ago
I'm a little torn here @atko. I've been a member of Reddit for 3 years and in one month here I've gotten over 1k CCP. It's really not too difficult to gain the CCP necessary to downvote if you spend time actively being on the site. But the reason I say this is that it's given me a good perspective of some of the good and bad things about both Reddit's system and Voat's system.
One of the major benefits to Voat's system WAS this implementation. I talked about it to friends that you had to contribute to be able to vote on people's posts. That you had to be a part of the community before you were able to help shape it. As well, learning that other people could have a dissenting opinion and it didn't end your world was a great factor as you had to just pass over comments you disagreed upon rather than immediately being able to come in and downvote everything in site.
While you are worried about those few subverses that are bending the rules to their favor, recognize as well that rather than toss the system out let's tweak it!
Some Ways to Fix the system
Some of these are already on here, some might not be but my thoughts are to try to put them together to create a single idea thread.
The idea here is that you need to contribute to be able to shape the forum. Lurkers should not be able to create a circlejerk, nor people who are visiting a subverse be able to destroy/nuke an opposing thought or subverse. I moderate the Colts subverse. If we had the subscriber levels of Reddit's user base, the Colts have 7k users and the Pats have 32k. Should the Pats be able to just come into the Colts subverse and destroy a person's CCP simply because of hatred? Having to interact with the subverse eliminates the idea that you can point out a thread that you don't like and have 100s of your 'followers' or fellow users go in their and brigade them.
While not ideal to allow people to remove dissent, in some places it might be necessary. /v/protectandserve is a perfect example as the creators are wanting a 'safe place' for the officers to discuss things without wanting a giant debate. I'm sure that there are other places too, perhaps a subverse based upon encouragement of others or similar. Allowing subverses to opt out of downvoting/upvoting might help to eliminate some of those issues.
Instead of a CCP based system, why not make it the same as you do for mod limitations? You have to have been a user for 5 days/10 days/30 days before you can upvote/downvote comments. This allows people to spend time getting to understand that you can read people's comments without needing to upvote or downvote.
I'm not sure what it would take, but so much of the issues with any upvote/downvote is that it is used as a disagree/agree button. Why not avoid this altogether by creating that button for those comments that are on point but simply not agreeable. Maybe this might help people to avoid the downvote button when in reality all they want to do is point out their disagreement?
Final Thoughts:
The big thing to me is removing the limitations also removes the learning experience that SOME received about how to be able to allow people to comment without resorting to using it as an agree/disagree button. It limited brigading and made it just a slight inconvenience to get to be able to help shape the places you visited. While some are abusing this, please take a breath before you jump ship on it. I really think it was one of the distinguishing features about Voat that attracted me and created the userbase that is much more civil in their discussions and created much more tangible content.
arisoncain ago
This is the best proposal thus far. Another consideration would be only allotting a limited number of downvotes (perhaps per subverse) for every 24 hours. I think if users knew that they only had a few to use, they wouldn't be as liberal with them. I don't have 100 CCP yet, but I can't think of more than one or two times a day that I have seen something that I believed really deserved to be downvoted, and almost all of those were spam.
NateThomas1979 ago
Which of those four options or some or all of them are the best proposals? I'm not sure which proposal you are discussing. Each one has pros and cons about it that we should consider and go through a vetting process to help make it a viable choice for Voat.
arisoncain ago
I was just speaking in terms of his overall proposal of these options, which he clearly put a lot of thought and effort into. Though I personally believe shifting from a Point-Based to a Time-Based system is ultimately the best of the four.
NateThomas1979 ago
I do see one limitation to the time-based system which is just that people create shill accounts that just sit dormant until they reach the allotted time and then suddenly have the ability to do what they desire.
I'm thinking that perhaps a combination might be best. 10-15 days as a member and received 10-15 upvotes or such which is nothing to get but forces individuals to make comments.
arisoncain ago
What about something like a ratio of 10/1 upvotes to downvotes in coordination with a time-based system? Maybe for every 10 CCP you have you are allotted one downvote or something to that effect, and your downvotes replenish every 24 hours? Downvotes should always be used with discretion, and only in situations where the comment adds nothing to the discussion. I think we can all agree that giving all users unlimited downvoting ability from day one will just turn the discussions here into the exact same discussions that were happening at that other site, which I don't believe anyone wants.