[college_physics]

What is the alternative? Operating a discourse forum is high maintenance and low visibility. Facebook/Linkedin? Horrible platforms in practically all possible ways. The fediverse has some ideas about a Reddit alternative (Lemmy) but much less mature than mastodon at this point and ofcourse yet to be seen how moderation will fare if user numbers start rising.

Like so many aspects of the current tech landscape, its largely a case of TINA, there is no alternative, even though the deficiencies are glaring.

[johnnyanmac]

TBH, something similar to hacker news but taken to an extreme. Give actual value to an account and make detriments revoke those priveledges. You need a minimum karma here to downvote, so take that and add more priveledges. even up to being light moderator or being able to have higher weighting in votes for comments. reward good behavior and quickly remove it if the tides turn.

You need some self moderation in oder to keep a healthy community, this encourages and rewards regulars. This can also guard against "Eternal September" if a regular's vote mattered more than some newcomer.