I have made a decision to alter and/or remove various restrictions on Voat. I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s something both @Atko and I believe needs to be reevaluated.
Voat has always had a problem with spam. @Amalek would spam posts and hijack the new queue making it unusable. MH101 and then later @SaneGoatiSwear would hijack comment pages making them unusable. The rules Voat uses were put in place in to combat this behavior. They are old rules, mostly remaining unchanged from the initial versions of this site. Most, if not all, of the rules were in direct response to spam attacks. It was never Voat’s intention to limit non-spam accounts, but this is what has happened as an indirect result of these rules.
Voat will not keep in place a system that permanently limits a segment of users from debating and conversing. This isn’t Free Speech as I see it or as I want it.
Voat will shortly be going live with a new code base, and I want to have a new system designed and ready for when this happens, so I am posting this announcement to get feedback from the community.
The main areas of concern:
- Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments
- Limiting any account that spam comments
TL;DR
We need to allow unpopular opinions while preventing comment spam.
How do we do it?
All options are on the table
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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Owlchemy ago
And the Owl has determined after reading through all of this that the answer is there is no answer. My thoughts on this are simple. I've never liked the whole up vote, down vote system, but it is what it is. Though my personal opinion falls in the mainstream of thought here on Voat, I've always wished we could see more opposing views. So yes, there is a problem ... but how to fix that is a mystery. I'll leave it up to you, Putt ... and after you've read through all this, and come to a decision which way you wanna go, I promise I'll give it a chance, as will most good goats. I wish you luck though, for this certainly seems like a conundrum, damned if ya do, damned if ya don't situation. No matter whatcha do ... you'll take heat ... so go with your instincts, they've always got us through all this in the past.
10250856? ago
I always enjoy reading your comments, Owlchemy. You're such a swell fella c:
Owlchemy ago
I just try to be a good camper - LOL. We have enough of the others.
10250880? ago
True enough.