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Are votes actually ruining niche communities? (piefed.zip)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by MindfulMaverick@piefed.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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:

Voting should be restricted to subscribed users only
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?

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[–] lemming@anarchist.nexus 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

you can just untick "german" in your language settings...

[–] lemming@anarchist.nexus 2 points 4 days ago

Only English is ticked... Don't worry mate, I already solved the problem!