[iamadog1029]

I don't find that voting systems are a positive evolution, generally. It's a non-committal way to interface for people that don't contribute any tangible content to a discussion. I remember when Facepunch Studios integrated it, which was simulating SA. It was years ago and I was a youth, but I remember, in myself at least, attempting to cater to voters. I don't suspect I fall far from the average interaction in that capacity. And I think that breeds disingenuous user interaction. And FP was a bog-standard BBS forum, the only thing that decided the content stream was moderation and new posts/threads; using votes to promote or demote content streams - targeting, [at least] has been pretty widely discussed as a hazard and that's all I see it as. So between those two features, targeting and disingenuous posting (itself a form of targeting), I think that voting systems at large are a real detractor in general conversation. And if we consider malefactors and echo formation... I just don't see a whole lot in the way of good other than streamlining and automating moderation, which is appropriate in some circumstances, in general conversation I think it just compromises the whole thing.

Of course, it's all dependent on the design of the website. If you're there simply to generate reams of data for marketing teams to sop up, that's something you can do with this sort of system. But if you're designing for legitimate vulnerability and honest to god expression 4chan is probably the best model in a sort of ironic twist. It's user-streamlined, no account, setup or email, the page is barebones, you don't need to post anything whatever and there's no history to haunt you. And maybe you could argue you can't trust anything on 4chan, but you could argue the same anywhere, and in fact I'd assume that the quantity of Facebook and Reddit are far more rife with artifice than 4chan. But FB and R aren't actually designed for absolute expression, they're designed to generate marketing feedback.