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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123_456 ago
HEY, LISTEN!
I've got an idea that could work, but I don't know if you can implement this. Please patent this for our website, so reddit can't use it. Ha-ha.
This is how it goes:
1 - Comments, and submissions have a report spam button. People click that button.
2 - The report goes to the sidebar, or another area of the website, and it asks RANDOM users if it's spam. They can voluntarily click to verify if it's spam. This way the power to judge something isn't in the hands of a few people.
3 - If a user's account gets too many verifications of spam, then they will be banned. However, if they want to, they can appeal, and ask for an un-banning.
4 - Of course what will motivate random users to moderate? Users will get points, and badges for identifying spam.
So, this is almost like the system we have now, except moderation is in the hands of many users. It's not necessarily bullet proof, but it leads us away from certain groups, and a few powerful people ganging up on an individual.
PuttItOut ago
We have the beginning stages of publicly viewable reports here: https://voat.co/v/all/about/reports
SaneGoatiSwear ago
i am not spam. i proved you're SJW shills that took the site from atif, against his will - - that's why you downvote brigaded me 30,000 points, attacked me 24/7 for 10 months, upvote brigaded harassment, well poisoning and character assassination posts against me to the front page every day for months, thats why you took out ads attacking me, that's why you coded in bots to the API to auto-downvote my posts before they even hit v/all/new so no one would ever see it, that's why you made a chat bot using my comments on voat to practice against, that's why you had to manufacture drama in order to steal the subs i modded that were free to discuss your criminal shilling against voat and your sjw takeover of voat.
i did not hijack comments. i was and am being censored on voat, and voat needed to hear about it - so i spoke up about it. and that's what you couldn't stand. that someone wasn't putting their head down, being silent about your illicit activities against voat, inc.
you can correct the record all you want, adolf puttler.
i know what you are and i know what you've done to voat and what was once the voat community.
as hate speech goes from protected free speech to criminal speech, let me remind you and all the SJWs, antifa, r/ shitredditsays, CTR/shareblue, blm, soros, and the rothschilds.. and you fake justin chastain: i hope you get raped and murdered and it's published on liveleaks.
Jixijenga ago
This is part of why you're a pariah here, you cannot take accountability for the fact that you made this situation worse. I defended you, I stood up for your message, I've upvoated you to counteract brigading, but then I saw why you were being treated this way.
You need to go back on your meds or whatver it was that made you a relatively normal person.
10281404? ago
Good on you for trying and acting as the Devil's Advocate when you first saw his automatic downvotes, it can take a lot more courage (or just a total lack of care about any blowback) to do that on a semi-anonymous forum like this. When someone is actually willing to calm down and have a discussion, it is always better than angry rants aimed at each other, no matter what the actual views or the perceived truth of the two sides are.
That said, even the most patient mediator has his limits, and some people just refuse to see reason or compromise.
Jixijenga ago
I just do what I think is right, but thank you for the kind words.