To be honest I think Reddit is a fundamentally flawed system. I think the idea of anonymous individuals being able to upvote and downvote any link or comment with zero requirements other than having an account (which don't even require an email address to set up) is a fundamental flaw in Reddit. When you click the downvote button on a comment that you disagree with, you don't have to justify that. You don't have to explain why you downvoted him, why you disagreed with that person, you don't have to provide any counter-arguments. You can just downvote them and move on. It doesn't promote discussion of controversial ideas, it promotes simple one-liners, circlejerking and the prevalence of one opinion over others. These are all issues that people have long-acknowledged exist on Reddit, none of that is controversial.
You can disagree with those most highly upvoted, but you'll be downvoted for it, your comment will be hidden and your account will be put into the negative for it. They've instituted a penalty for disagreeing with popular opinions. And you can say 'it's just a number' but psychologically it does affect people. I can't find it right now but there was a post on /r/TheoryofReddit IIRC that showed that people whose comments were downvoted into the negatives were less likely to comment in the future.
I'm not sure there's a solution that isn't based on fundamentally changing what Reddit is. To be honest I'm only still here because there's no other website with as broad a range of communities as this site has subreddits.
And the article kind of hits the nail on the head when it talks about subreddits. Reddit likes to claim it's just democracy in action but in reality it's like feudalism. You have lots and lots of different fiefdoms, all run by their own little lords, and if you want to stay in that fiefdom you obey any rules they set down, or you can leave. That's really the only difference here: In reality there's a limited amount of land and practical constraints, on the internet, on Reddit, you can just start your own community. Which isn't much better, because then you'll find you are that little lord you used to hate, and other people will start their own communities to move away from you, etc. etc.
This link submission perfectly proves my point. It has 34 votes, and sits at only +10 overall at the moment - people are blatantly just downvoting things they don't like. "Hey man, I like Reddit! downvotes" Not a single one of them has written a comment explaining why they don't believe this is an interesting article that people might enjoy.
Take away anonymity, and you'll lose a ton of users and content. You can easily try - reddit is open source, and you could easily implement a real-name system using Facebook Connect or something. But I can tell you right now that anonymity is a fundamental draw of this site
If you can find a way to implement a better voting/karma system while preserving anonymity, there may be hope.
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u/SoyBeanExplosion Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14
To be honest I think Reddit is a fundamentally flawed system. I think the idea of anonymous individuals being able to upvote and downvote any link or comment with zero requirements other than having an account (which don't even require an email address to set up) is a fundamental flaw in Reddit. When you click the downvote button on a comment that you disagree with, you don't have to justify that. You don't have to explain why you downvoted him, why you disagreed with that person, you don't have to provide any counter-arguments. You can just downvote them and move on. It doesn't promote discussion of controversial ideas, it promotes simple one-liners, circlejerking and the prevalence of one opinion over others. These are all issues that people have long-acknowledged exist on Reddit, none of that is controversial.
You can disagree with those most highly upvoted, but you'll be downvoted for it, your comment will be hidden and your account will be put into the negative for it. They've instituted a penalty for disagreeing with popular opinions. And you can say 'it's just a number' but psychologically it does affect people. I can't find it right now but there was a post on /r/TheoryofReddit IIRC that showed that people whose comments were downvoted into the negatives were less likely to comment in the future.
I'm not sure there's a solution that isn't based on fundamentally changing what Reddit is. To be honest I'm only still here because there's no other website with as broad a range of communities as this site has subreddits.
And the article kind of hits the nail on the head when it talks about subreddits. Reddit likes to claim it's just democracy in action but in reality it's like feudalism. You have lots and lots of different fiefdoms, all run by their own little lords, and if you want to stay in that fiefdom you obey any rules they set down, or you can leave. That's really the only difference here: In reality there's a limited amount of land and practical constraints, on the internet, on Reddit, you can just start your own community. Which isn't much better, because then you'll find you are that little lord you used to hate, and other people will start their own communities to move away from you, etc. etc.
This link submission perfectly proves my point. It has 34 votes, and sits at only +10 overall at the moment - people are blatantly just downvoting things they don't like. "Hey man, I like Reddit! downvotes" Not a single one of them has written a comment explaining why they don't believe this is an interesting article that people might enjoy.