Nah.

Nobody should care that much about fake internet points anyway.

I think you obsess too much with that non-issue.

I don't see how this could be enforced. There's no requirement for each instance to run the same software ad others to require this.

As open source, someone could create a private fork and just not do it.

There could also be communities where up vote and down vote farming could occur so save them for other communities.

Now for the good news. If you were a school or uni or some other organisation, you could make your own instance and have to software changed to enforce this and not federate as the organization controls the servers used and the code on it.

Hmm... as an alternative, what if the weight of a given user’s downvotes on a given server were divided by the number of downvotes that user made over the last (say) week?

So for instance the downvotes of a user who downvotes a hundred posts will have a tenth the weight of a user who downvotes ten posts.

Hate to say it... I don't enjoy sites (as much) when there is no up/downvoting, so I don't like this idea either. Sorry.

Ooooh! We're doing alternatives! Oh boy!

Okokokok: so, you get one vote point every week for every comment or post that has a net positive of upvotes by other subscribed users in the community. Every net negative post or comment loses a point. You can use those votes either for an up or down, in any community, but you have a balance reflected by your positive contributions as determined by your peers.

This is a horrible idea in many ways, but also a great idea in some ways:

Positives:

• New accounts have very little voting power. Established users have voting power proportional to their positive contribution to their communities, as determined by their peers.
• It would stop the practice of creating a throw-away accounts only for the purpose of harassing via voting. It would require an extra step of creating a post or comment that at least one other user upvotes. If a user used one of their other accounts just to upvote a comment by another of their accounts, it's a zero-sum game: they've spent a vote just to get a vote.
• Established, positive commenters and posters would have proportionate voting power.
• It would encourage constructive, positive engagement.
• It's entirely relative to the community, and would encourage content relevant to and popular with that community.

Negatives:

• Established, positive commenters and posters would have proportionate voting power. This would in theory be encouraging an oligarchy, although since voting is post-scarcity, and since voting is one-time per account, it can't really be translated into exercise-able "power."
• It would encourage constructive, positive engagement. In other words, it'd discourage dissent or unpopular opinions, reinforcing the echo chamber.
• It's entirely relative to the community, and would encourage content relevant to and popular with that community. Same as above: it encourages pandering.
• Someone could still have bot accounts that only have to post or comment such that they have a net positive "income," and then can just sit there and accrue voting points over time, accumulating enough points to still perform voting harassment.
• It's biased against lurkers; some people aren't social, and shouldn't be punished for it. This would take away their voices.

I think some of the negatives could be addressed; e.g., vote accrual only happens for comments or posts that are under a month old: you can only accrue a max of 4 points per post or comment. This would address the first and fourth negative. However, I don't think anything could resolve the echo chamber, or the other negatives. Anyway, there's my bad idea.

My opinion is still that Lemmy needs reactions in addition to, or instead of, voting. Voting should be reserved for "this is something that should be seen / is not interesting," but it doubles as "I dis/agree with this". It's ambiguous. Lemmy needs reactions -- Github is a good model.

The real problem with having only voting and not reactions is that ambiguity. When someone makes a comment that I think is interesting and well thought-out, but I don't agree with... do I upvote it? I think it is worth reading, but I don't want to imply I agree with it. Same with posts: "Donald Trump orders the execution of all homeless people." On the one hand, I want to upvote the fuck out of that because it needs to be seen and bubbled-up by the algorithm; on the other hand, I don't want to imply that I agree with it.

Reddit used to always preach this: upvote content that needs to be seen, not based on agreement -- although it never worked out that way, because people want a way to express their opinion about a post or comment. If voting is the only mechanism for expressing dis/agreement, that's what it'll be used for. If Lemmy had reactions, then it'd allow people a fast way to express their opinions about comment without having to resort to voting, or in banal responses that don't contribute anything to the conversation.

If I could make one change to Lemmy, I'd get rid of voting altogether, and just have reactions. You can still sort: there are obviously positive and negative reactions (thumbs-up/down), and most reactions can probably be grouped into one of three categories: positive, negative, and neutral. You don't need to support all emojis; again, Github is a good model. You have a half-dozen or a dozen choices, each of which falls into one of the three categories. The current sorting by vote could be done by subtracting negatives from positives; maybe you add the neutrals to the positives, because if someone bothered to react, it probably counts as being worth sorting up. That's a debatable detail, though, not a blocker. But so often I see a comment where I just want to say, "I agree with this" without implying that it's worthy of sorting up; or I want to say "you need to see this" without implying that I agree with the content. My current choices are: upvote or downvote with an ambiguous implication, or a reply saying "This!" that only muddies the thread.

Voting is ambiguous, and limited, and easily abused. It should be tossed out and replaced with reactions -- or at the very least added to supplement voting. Then I could at least upvote important news to get it to the front page, but add a thumbs-down to show I don't like it.

Or what if we had a limit of ten of each a day?