A bit of a preamble, you should know that next to none of us think that the upvote-downvote system here is perfect. Head over to /t/ideasforsnapzu where everybody is suggesting things and giving opinions like these on how to improve the site. There have been countless suggestions on the voting system and there are a lot of functions currently being worked on. This isn't the final version of the voting system. Snapzu is a young and evolving site. Some of the features that exist on reddit are there after years and years of the site being alive. Snapzu is only a couple years old.
These things take time. However, the solution is definitely not to just give up and let it happen. You keep referencing some inevitable future point of the site that is impossible to fight as if that's a fact. Truth is, no site is the same and just because it happened on reddit doesn't mean it will happen on every other content aggregator. Snapzu isn't reddit. Reddit isn't snapzu. Snapzu isn't voat or hubski or meneame or panjurry or whatever content aggregator has been advertised around reddit the past month. Snapzu is just snapzu. It has it's own destiny. While some things are truly inevitable, we don't know what. Websites aren't a science. Just accepting the toxic aspects of a different website and just saying "let it happen" is akin to just asking for the site to become toxic itself.
Now, I'll tackle your post concept to concept
Hive mind
Here is the thing, yes you are giving an accurate description of a hive mind, but you aren't giving the whole picture. Yes, a site-wide hive mind is an extremely effective method of content aggregation. You can have certain opinions up and down at a powerful level with mass agreement. However, what this picture doesn't paint is the quality of these submissions. The reason why large subreddits are such terrible places for quality content is because of the hive mind. Nobody cares about quality on these subs so nobody upvotes based on quality. They upvote based on "I agree vs I disagree". This is why on top threads on /r/askreddit, when the post isn't tagged as serious, it is always some pun or joke, or super-agreeable comment. They were just the first person there and their content rose to the top, even though later users have higher quality posts, they are buried under the hive mind.
Taking the higher quality subreddits into mind, like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians, these subs are only their level of quality because of two things:
1)A community with quality over agreeability in mind
2)Extremely active moderation team.
If the community didn't agree with the moderator's principles, then the moderator's jobs would be absolutely impossible. While the moderation team at those subs are spectacular, the community and their principles are also a driving force.
Taking the smaller subs into account, you are right in that these tend to be higher quality subreddits, but they tend to be so for different reasons than just the hivemind. Hiveminds aren't things that start to happen at extremely large sizes. Subreddits/tribes can have hiveminds at extremely small sizes. The reason why quality tends to be higher in these subs is usually just because of reddit's karma system. It's extremely hard to game smaller subs for karma. For one, you are never going to gain a massive amount of karma from a small sub, so legitimate gamers only stay in the large subs where they can take advantage of the system there. Also, when you ...
A bit of a preamble, you should know that next to none of us think that the upvote-downvote system here is perfect. Head over to /t/ideasforsnapzu where everybody is suggesting things and giving opinions like these on how to improve the site. There have been countless suggestions on the voting system and there are a lot of functions currently being worked on. This isn't the final version of the voting system. Snapzu is a young and evolving site. Some of the features that exist on reddit are there after years and years of the site being alive. Snapzu is only a couple years old.
These things take time. However, the solution is definitely not to just give up and let it happen. You keep referencing some inevitable future point of the site that is impossible to fight as if that's a fact. Truth is, no site is the same and just because it happened on reddit doesn't mean it will happen on every other content aggregator. Snapzu isn't reddit. Reddit isn't snapzu. Snapzu isn't voat or hubski or meneame or panjurry or whatever content aggregator has been advertised around reddit the past month. Snapzu is just snapzu. It has it's own destiny. While some things are truly inevitable, we don't know what. Websites aren't a science. Just accepting the toxic aspects of a different website and just saying "let it happen" is akin to just asking for the site to become toxic itself.
Now, I'll tackle your post concept to concept
Hive mind
Here is the thing, yes you are giving an accurate description of a hive mind, but you aren't giving the whole picture. Yes, a site-wide hive mind is an extremely effective method of content aggregation. You can have certain opinions up and down at a powerful level with mass agreement. However, what this picture doesn't paint is the quality of these submissions. The reason why large subreddits are such terrible places for quality content is because of the hive mind. Nobody cares about quality on these subs so nobody upvotes based on quality. They upvote based on "I agree vs I disagree". This is why on top threads on /r/askreddit, when the post isn't tagged as serious, it is always some pun or joke, or super-agreeable comment. They were just the first person there and their content rose to the top, even though later users have higher quality posts, they are buried under the hive mind.
Taking the higher quality subreddits into mind, like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians, these subs are only their level of quality because of two things:
1)A community with quality over agreeability in mind
2)Extremely active moderation team.
If the community didn't agree with the moderator's principles, then the moderator's jobs would be absolutely impossible. While the moderation team at those subs are spectacular, the community and their principles are also a driving force.
Taking the smaller subs into account, you are right in that these tend to be higher quality subreddits, but they tend to be so for different reasons than just the hivemind. Hiveminds aren't things that start to happen at extremely large sizes. Subreddits/tribes can have hiveminds at extremely small sizes. The reason why quality tends to be higher in these subs is usually just because of reddit's karma system. It's extremely hard to game smaller subs for karma. For one, you are never going to gain a massive amount of karma from a small sub, so legitimate gamers only stay in the large subs where they can take advantage of the system there. Also, when you make a lower quality post, it harder for it to get hidden on a smaller sub. Less people to downvote you combined with the fact that people can probably see the higher quality post below yours.
how do you enforce that? how do you police people's downvoting?
First, I talk about this a lot in the preamble. Also, for policing, reference the part about /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians above. There are already some systems in place, such as new members being restricted on their downvotes (1-10 are 5 snap downvotes a day). Another part is how the site is set up. It is less partitioned like reddit. People follow each other and the tribes are more of a web then separate tribes. This alone helps with policing and maintaining a site culture because the culture of a single tribe is spread through the rest of the site and vice versa. There are also a lot more suggestions. If you have any, give them at /t/ideasforsnapzu. The thing is, what your current suggestion is, is to give up and let it happen. Just let quality degrade. Of course, quality degrading is practically inevitable, but the question is how much. Just giving up leaves that up to complete chance. Fighting that degradation gives us a better chance up being a large site with quality content.
Boston Bombing
Frankly, I agree with this part. It's a bit much to suggest that the famous reddit witch-hunts were because of the voting system.
Hefty vote section
Except it isn't about what the 1000th post is. It is about Everything in between. Here is a simple example.
Let's split the posts into three sections. A is high quality. B is low quality posts. C is spam.
In the suggested system, the content is order as so: A B C.
In the agree/disagree system the content is ordered like this: A (BC)
Instead of having B separate from C, B is now mixed with C. To find high quality alternative opinions, you don't need to wade through A and B, you have to wade through B and C. Instead of having to subject yourself to content that you enjoy, half of the content you have to read is spam or harassing content. That is overall just a worse experience.
Immaturity
Sorry, but I don't see why you think that is so immature. Sure, if somebody complained about every single downvote that they got, that would be annoying. And I've seen people get annoyed at people who complain about a very small amount of downvotes. It goes both ways. However, in no way is it immature for people to wonder why they are getting downvotes on high quality content that follows every rule. Especially considering the site culture and the admin's intentions in the FAQ and the fact that downvotes affect your reputation which affects your own voting weight, having a number of downvotes on the post suggests that you did something wrong or your post wasn't a quality post. If you believe that your post followed all rules and was a quality post, you deserve to know why people think that isn't true.
Upvote Contradiction
While not perfect, that largely isn't true. Low quality but agreeable posts AREN'T wanted at the top, and that is reflected by the community. Even on reddit, that is reflected by the community. It's the reason why everybody hates all of the pun threads at the top of askreddit posts. They are low quality, but since people laughed and upvoted, they are what is top, and people complain about it. The reason why you don't see this as much on snapzu is because it really doesn't happen yet on snapzu, to a large extent. If you go down to the bottom of threads, you will see a lot of agreeable posts that don't incite conversation with maybe an upvote or two (with probably a couple downvotes for being irrelevant, or in essence, spam). Of course, the system isn't perfect, and I think it could be improved upon with changes to the UI, but largely, what you said really isn't true.
(Just found out Snapzu's character limit. 7500. I guess I've gotten my message out haha.)
A bit of a preamble, you should know that next to none of us think that the upvote-downvote system here is perfect. Head over to /t/ideasforsnapzu where everybody is suggesting things and giving opinions like these on how to improve the site. There have been countless suggestions on the voting system and there are a lot of functions currently being worked on. This isn't the final version of the voting system. Snapzu is a young and evolving site. Some of the features that exist on reddit are there after years and years of the site being alive. Snapzu is only a couple years old.
These things take time. However, the solution is definitely not to just give up and let it happen. You keep referencing some inevitable future point of the site that is impossible to fight as if that's a fact. Truth is, no site is the same and just because it happened on reddit doesn't mean it will happen on every other content aggregator. Snapzu isn't reddit. Reddit isn't snapzu. Snapzu isn't voat or hubski or meneame or panjurry or whatever content aggregator has been advertised around reddit the past month. Snapzu is just snapzu. It has it's own destiny. While some things are truly inevitable, we don't know what. Websites aren't a science. Just accepting the toxic aspects of a different website and just saying "let it happen" is akin to just asking for the site to become toxic itself.
Now, I'll tackle your post concept to concept
Here is the thing, yes you are giving an accurate description of a hive mind, but you aren't giving the whole picture. Yes, a site-wide hive mind is an extremely effective method of content aggregation. You can have certain opinions up and down at a powerful level with mass agreement. However, what this picture doesn't paint is the quality of these submissions. The reason why large subreddits are such terrible places for quality content is because of the hive mind. Nobody cares about quality on these subs so nobody upvotes based on quality. They upvote based on "I agree vs I disagree". This is why on top threads on /r/askreddit, when the post isn't tagged as serious, it is always some pun or joke, or super-agreeable comment. They were just the first person there and their content rose to the top, even though later users have higher quality posts, they are buried under the hive mind.
Taking the higher quality subreddits into mind, like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians, these subs are only their level of quality because of two things:
1)A community with quality over agreeability in mind
2)Extremely active moderation team.
If the community didn't agree with the moderator's principles, then the moderator's jobs would be absolutely impossible. While the moderation team at those subs are spectacular, the community and their principles are also a driving force.
Taking the smaller subs into account, you are right in that these tend to be higher quality subreddits, but they tend to be so for different reasons than just the hivemind. Hiveminds aren't things that start to happen at extremely large sizes. Subreddits/tribes can have hiveminds at extremely small sizes. The reason why quality tends to be higher in these subs is usually just because of reddit's karma system. It's extremely hard to game smaller subs for karma. For one, you are never going to gain a massive amount of karma from a small sub, so legitimate gamers only stay in the large subs where they can take advantage of the system there. Also, when you ...
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