My problem with Voat is the core of their system. You are not allowed to downvote until you have enough points gained through other user´s upvotes of your actions. That is a major restriction to lurkers like me who prefer to read and not write much. People who mindlessly post and comment just to gain internet points have much more power over the system than me. I´ve seen the comment history of people on Reddit who would just keep jumping from thread to thread just to say a witty remark or some inside joke that has been posted to death that will hopefully get some upvotes.
I'd agree, and not just for that reason. In my limited experience using Voat, making karma actually affect the functionality of your account not only discouraged lurkers and more casual users, but actively encouraged the sort of "karma whoring" you're talking about. By far the easiest way to farm points was to repost popular content from Reddit -- which made the site into even more of a Reddit knock-off than it already was, because lots of people did just that.
Hi rti9, this is an interesting point I hadn't considered (fellow lurker). I feel like the system is somehow self correcting with how their multipliers work, but I'm not entirely sure what the implications of "leveling" are. But, I sure am having fun investigating!
The other problem here, is this kind of encourages power users. There's an actual, tangible benefit to having more of these points. On Reddit, they were just a fun number. On Voat, they make it difficult for you to counter negative content, and content you have no interest in, so it encourages you to do things to gain points. Whether this is reposting images or stupid jokes, or just "jumping on a bandwagon", to me it feels like it's basically encouraging a Reddit style "circlejerk". It might work out different in practice, but that's kind of how I see it going.
My problem with Voat is the core of their system. You are not allowed to downvote until you have enough points gained through other user´s upvotes of your actions. That is a major restriction to lurkers like me who prefer to read and not write much. People who mindlessly post and comment just to gain internet points have much more power over the system than me. I´ve seen the comment history of people on Reddit who would just keep jumping from thread to thread just to say a witty remark or some inside joke that has been posted to death that will hopefully get some upvotes.
I'd agree, and not just for that reason. In my limited experience using Voat, making karma actually affect the functionality of your account not only discouraged lurkers and more casual users, but actively encouraged the sort of "karma whoring" you're talking about. By far the easiest way to farm points was to repost popular content from Reddit -- which made the site into even more of a Reddit knock-off than it already was, because lots of people did just that.
Hi rti9, this is an interesting point I hadn't considered (fellow lurker). I feel like the system is somehow self correcting with how their multipliers work, but I'm not entirely sure what the implications of "leveling" are. But, I sure am having fun investigating!
The other problem here, is this kind of encourages power users. There's an actual, tangible benefit to having more of these points. On Reddit, they were just a fun number. On Voat, they make it difficult for you to counter negative content, and content you have no interest in, so it encourages you to do things to gain points. Whether this is reposting images or stupid jokes, or just "jumping on a bandwagon", to me it feels like it's basically encouraging a Reddit style "circlejerk". It might work out different in practice, but that's kind of how I see it going.