Using and navigating this site would be a huge pain in the ass without them.

I can understand getting rid of downvotes to reduce hostility, but removing votes as a whole is just a bad idea. Effort posts would immediately get buried under shitposts that only took a few seconds (Not saying those are inherently bad ofc., but there needs to be a balance).

Every post would just turn into a contest of "Who sees it and comments first", which would suck. I unironically do not want to return to the "First!" era of commenting.

  • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    No, that’s stupid. As another poster said, first! Is all over places with votes and algorithms, and we need to engage with each other, not rely on the “content” that got aggregated to the top.

    You can’t honestly tell me you only read the “top” few replies or posts and believe yourself to be getting a good idea of what’s going on. I certainly don’t consider my understanding to be complete when I do that and when I read everything I gotta at least scan the joke posts too.

    So votes don’t save me from reading the shitposts and I am on a shitposting forum.

    I also gotta take on your call for balance. I’ve been on forums that were just absolute chaos at all times, ones that upheld a very high standard of discourse and lots in between. There are certainly some small differences in form that encourage or discourage behavior, but what makes it happen is the users, the actual people who make the posts. Not some algorithm that figures out what newness/engagement quotient ought to be displayed to a user browsing the front page.

    Here I’ve written all that dumb crap and didn’t even ask: how would a lack of votes make the site a huge pain in the ass for you?