[hhjinks]

This is the problem with voting based social media. A demographic can be entirely supplanted by another really quickly. All you need is for the new demographic to upvote themselves, and the pre-existing demographic to not downvote the other demographic. Pre-existing users will start leaving when they see the content they originally came there for being outcompeted by the content the new demographic has introduced, causing a domino effect.

I've seen this happen with multiple subreddits. HN is also at risk for this, but it's a niche corner of the internet, so it would surprise me if there are ever enough non-assimilated individuals coming in at once to truly endanger the community.

[anonzzzies]

I would start by not allowing voting on main topics; only allow on comments. And rank topics based on comment votes. Bad comments are going to be downvotes or, if bad quality, will just be removed.

[kaba0]

Tildes may be an interesting testing ground as a forum without downvote. It has Labels instead for marking less constructive comments, like Joke, Noise, Malice, etc.

[Karrot_Kream]

Tildes does not rank based on voting, and instead displays votes as a separate signal. IMO it's a great piece of UX. It gives the author the pleasure of imaginary internet points but doesn't allow highly online mobs to sway the ordering of discussion.