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well no, if there would be an explanation for a plothole it would not be a plothole.
Where have I claimed that everyone was nice?
your whole argument is based on the flaw that you trust people to vote correctly (however correct is defined). Or in other words, you trust that people are nice from your perspective.
The only way to prove conclusively that something could be improved upon is to suggest an improvement.
now we move from objectivism to what is good. The complete opposite.
Levitating would be better and that is the objective truth.
Breathing pollutants is bad and that is the objective truth.
A forum with no voting has less to no censorship and that is the objective truth.
"a design which didn't suck" comes down to a whole lot of subjective factors. As I already said forums with votes are preferred by people because votes are great as they give gratification and reward. This is a subjective topic.
What people like and do not like does not change the fact that votes create censorship.
You can not say that "votes create censorship" is wrong because people would not like a system without voting.
This is just disguised argumentum ad populum. Many people have to like it otherwise it is not true.
The only way to prove conclusively that something could be improved upon is to suggest an improvement.
that is the whole fallacy. A bad aspect can be definitely described without suggesting a solution. The problem and the solution are two entities. A math formula can be proven wrong without giving a solution.
Votes create censorship is true even without a solution for it.
How would you even turn this around? What about problems where nobody found a solution yet? By your definition, they are not a problem, because one can not define a solution for them.
No reason, or any reason? These two statements seem to contradict one another?
no reasoning as in people do not have to lay out a logical proof why it was given.
any reason as in people vote based on emotions not just objectivity
still, it comes down to you thinking and hoping that everybody is nice. Which is a flaw. You have no argument against my statement other than "it is probably not that bad because people are nice, I think"
which is not an argument and has nothing to do with objectivity.
Ah yes, I love that usual "argument":
"why don't you do it better?" "nobody is stopping you from doing it yourself" "if you think it is bad you have to bring up ways to make it better"
completely irrelevant to discuss a critique. I'm pretty sure there is a name for such replies but I don't remember it.
I already replied to that. Peer review is not ideal but far better than a voting system as it is implemented in forums.
Both bring censorship.
Voting should be changed because censorship is damaging to objective discussion.
Should voting be removed with no replacement to ensure quality and order in a forum? no. and I have never claimed that.
With blind peer review I also don't know who votes whether my paper gets accepted. In both cases I have a broad idea.
again with the "peer review is not good so voting can be bad too"
I already made a statement. Voting based on a random group of people that can vote without giving any reasoning does not result in objective voting. And this in return censors content.
Now you try to say that this is not that much of a problem because people who are "good" have more influence on the vote. But how is it decided who is good and should have more influence? By them getting votes. It is a circle.
How do you imagine countering the argument that people in a forum are strangers, unknown to you with the power to vote however they desire without having to reason or explain their vote?
Sure you can say that it is not that big of a problem in your opinion but that does not change the truth of my statement.
And even still, a peer review is not an upvote or downvote. You can not break down a peer review to the level of a downvote or upvote.
What do you even try to argue? You try to argue that my statement is wrong because If my argument is correct I would also have to be against peer reviews? And being against peer reviews is not correct?
This just drips with argumentum ad populum. "look at this guy, he must be against peer reviews, everybody does peer reviews so he is wrong"
you on purpose ignore the point that you do not know who votes.
you assume and hope that everybody is nice and votes based on objective reasoning only
you also ignore that I say that there should be another system or a changed voting system to ensure quality.
I say that you do not know what random people vote and your argument that they probably vote good is completely flawed.
And for the karma system that has some really bad implications too. Somebody with more Karma has even more power to censor.
You just shift it away from new visitors to older visitors.
How is it decided who is a good visitor and who is not? It is based on votes. It is a loop that does not work.
If my argument is that votes do not work then you can not argue against it with a system that uses votes as its basis.
So because peer review is not that good a voting system can also be not that good?
I fail to see your point arguing about a voting system creating censorship and thus it should be considered to be removed or at least changed from what is used nowadays in every forum.
Your arguments just outline that the peer review system in scientific communities is not ideal and also imposes censorship.
And still, it is by far better than a voting system in a forum. Sure in papers you might not have the perfect peer to find every error but in a voting system on a forum, you do not need to have any legitimation, qualification, or reasoning to cast your vote.
If 50% of studies by professionals have so many errors, how good is a rating by random people online?
Wrong or harmful content should be removed or labeled but voting is not good for that.
that's a lot of if and when.
it does not matter what scenarios you bring up, an upvote or downvote has no reasoning.
Sure people might use it to categorize a false claim as bad which would be helpful.
But people can also use it to downvote based on their personal beliefs.
You can not prove either. Anybody can make a vote for any reason that the person has.
you can not prove if a vote has a beneficial effect or a negative one.
I can take 10 of my friends and downvote every one of your new posts and nobody will ever see them again.
A vote is anonymous, available to everybody, and can be done with good or bad intentions.
So it comes down to who does the voting.
And nobody controls who votes. It is a random group of people. And a random group of people never votes correctly.
For instance, I was on a forum for learning Chinese (a topic about which I know almost nothing), you could absolutely not trust me to vote "correctly" on a post claiming that a particular character represents a particular word. There's a "correct" answer for that question, in that most Chinese speakers will say that the character either does or doesn't approximate the word, but due to my membership in the group of "people who speak no Chinese whatsoever", I am fundamentally unqualified to be voting on such a topic.
nobody controls who votes. I can go to the Chinese forum and vote wrongly.
If the definitions of the group and correctness were truly irrelevant, this single case of my being unqualified to vote would prove I was never to be trusted to vote correctly.
the whole point is that in a vote nothing is proven or not. Nobody knows if you are qualified or not. Nobody knows if the vote you gave is justified by reasoning or not.
All the problems you outline can be solved but not through a voting system as they are implemented currently. The voting systems as they are now are rather bad at solving the challenges you outline and in addition foster censorship.
If anything your arguments are more proof of why current voting systems are bad. Why do you trust a random group of people to decide what is a good presentation and what not? How do you know that they vote based on the presentation and not just because they do like the topic because it is against their personal beliefs?
I disagree with you on "good" content, though. On the very basic level, there's stuff I like (and would like to like, and so on), and stuff I don't like (or whose disliking I'd endorse, and so on). I realize other people are similar to that, and will respect their recommendations (e.g. LessWrong upvotes). This "liking" already includes stuff from different viewpoints – anarchist and communization writings, social choice theory and deleuze etc.
I see the reason but current voting systems will censor content that you do not like which is harmful to have objective discussions.
And while I don't know how you organise your social interactions, I (mostly subconsciously) perform a lot of social filtering for people who say interesting and smart things, and probably also for people who agree with me in their basic outlook on life. Not completely, of course, but I'd be surprised if not everyone did this.
this is not censorship.
I can say that I prefer a mix of both. I find it interesting to see the difference in a community looking at their most liked content and the least liked or ignored content. I'm aware of how the system works so I purposely try to avoid the rating. There are very few people who do so though.
On another note, we should also be really aware of forums and social media with voting systems. They reinforce bubbles and echo chambers. People have delved into Social Media being Skinner Boxes for humans. We are trained to act in a way that is most suitable for the algorithm which gives us the most upvotes and thus gratification.
again this all loops around to trusting a group of people to vote correctly.
How you define the group of people and what is correct is irrelevant.
I can agree that there should be sites where you can share things you like purely based on beliefs and personal opinions of you and a group of people.
For a forum aimed at objective discussion, voting is counterproductive, at least in the way voting is implemented in any forum nowadays.
Aim for rational reasoning and truth, yet anybody can vote based on personal beliefs and emotions to bury the truth.
And again, downvoting to keep objectively bad content away like a post that is not fitting for the category would be reasonable yet no voting system reflects that.
so you compare peer review to upvotes?
A peer review usually includes a peer giving a review. A review is not the same as an upvote.
For one a peer review should be made by a peer, a professional in your field that knows about the topic. An upvote can be made by anybody.
A review includes feedback, revisions, and reasoning why parts of the content are wrong. An upvote does not include this.
Censorship requires a third party. If one releases content on a forum and a viewer going through the most recent posts decides to not read it is no censorship.
Censorship requires a third party between creator and reader that prevents distribution and access to the creation.
And your argument goes into argumentum ad populum. Just because most people prefer forums with voting systems does not mean that they are better.
It is obvious why every forum and social media site has voting. It is about the psychology of humans. Gratification and recognition are great.
Voting can serve as a tool to sort correct content from wrong one but as any voting is implemented currently they do not achieve this.
I agree with the overall sentiment, yet there is no forum system that I'm aware of where it ensures that people have to vote on objectivity.
I do not like your statement, so I will downvote it. My downvote does not have to be reasoned or explained.
You described it nicely in the IRL version with the crackpot. One group of people concludes that the person is speaking the truth and is objectively correct. The other sees them as a crackpot because of their personal beliefs. In a forum, the second group has the power to downvote.
"a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of prejudice against the arguer"
was not formulated well
"a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of personal beliefs of the reader"
"Without voting, how would you propose that users share metadata about which content is factually accurate/inaccurate, "objectively" true/false arguments, or just unusually worth reading for people like themselves?"
random people on the internet sure are not the group of people fit for this, especially when voting takes no time or reasoning and nobody checks if it is correct or wrong.
trade-offs have to be made to make a site more usable but categorization is better in that regard. A forum can be separated into different topics and divided into different content forms like posts, Shortforms, questions, etc.
And I will say right away because I know people will comment on it. Categorization is not censorship. When there is a voting system a third party has control over who sees the content or not. A categorization is chosen by the creator and allows people to seek out that content based on it. Censorship requires a third party between creator and reader.
About the quality/truth aspect I agree but any system currently used is not reflecting that. If somebody makes a post it is rated for quality/truth by other people. But nobody rates their rating.
People can just vote down or up without it reflecting the truth or quality. I can downvote your comment even if it is true because I do not like you.
The comparison does not fall flat because of the greater amount of content on the internet because this in itself already assumes that the content on the internet has to be ranked from "good" to "bad" so you can look at the "good" content in the time you have. Which just circles back to who decides what is "good" and "bad". In real life, you do not have this. You have to hear what other people say without a rating presented beforehand.
Also on a personal note, I think it is harmful if we strive to just look at the "good" content. It creates echo chambers and bubbles. For discussions, we do not gain much if we just look at the correct reasonings and do not look at the errors made in the wrong ones.
Forums should not have a voting system
Any kind of upvotes or downvotes create censoring, be it intentionally or by the nature of how we think.
Intentionally:
Front pages, top, trending, etc. hide posts that are low rated. Rating a post then becomes a tool for censorship as a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of prejudice against the arguer.
by nature:
seeing a post that is voted low makes people skip over it or from the beginning rule it out as wrong or bad even if the argument is true.
Imagine this as an IRL version. When a person speaks you see their "score" that other people assign to them. People that have lower "score" are quieter and filtered away for you. If you say anything that people don't like they will rate you negatively and thus lowering your voice.