Been thinking about the voting system lately and how it inevitably kills in-depth discussion in growing communities.

Every sub/community follows the same trajectory: starts small with passionate users sharing quality content/discussion → grows in popularity → memes and low-effort posts flood in → actual discussion gets buried or downvoted.

I’m guilty of this too tbh. I realized I use upvotes/downvotes as personal “like/dislike” buttons rather than judging relevance to the community.

Here’s my hot take:

  1. Voting should be restricted to subscribed users only
  2. Downvotes should be capped at a fraction of total upvotes a user gives out

The clearest example of this failure is gonewild. The demographics mean male content (which is 100% allowed) gets mass-downvoted into oblivion while female content dominates the front page. It’s not about quality or relevance anymore - it’s just a popularity contest.

Anyone else feel like the voting system needs a complete rethink?

  • lemming@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    I just block meme-posters and meme communities and my Fediverse stays interesting as a result. No need to convince/wait for the world to change when I can conveniently block the slop myself, it’s one of the most appreciated features of PieFed/Lemmy imho.
    Recall that whole db0 defederation of feddit.org? Was not a problem for me at all because I had already blocked the instance long before the whole thing kicked off simply because I didn’t speak German and didn’t want my feed full of German posts I couldn’t understand anyway.