Voting for forum posts

[FeepingCreature]

On Thursday, 1 April 2021 at 02:11:17 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/31/2021 2:40 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>> I'm sure this wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, but 
>> I also don't think it is a good idea. Online voting is 
>> emotionally toxic and logically fallacious. We're better off 
>> without it.
>
> Votes on Reddit and Hackernews are heavily biased towards first 
> posts. Posts the next day might as well have never happened.
>
> Another thing is on HN, downvoting based on politics rather 
> than quality is proscribed but happens relentlessly anyway.
>
> I prefer the egalitarian approach of all voices here are equal. 
> The only moderation we do is deleting posts that don't belong 
> here, like spam.

I like the following vote logic:

- topics sort by vote count mixed with newness
- top-level replies sort by new (recency)
- mid-level replies sort by vote.

This is what Reddit does when you set a thread to "New by 
default."

The downside of a purely recency based sorting is that it favors 
verbosity and controversy rather than consensus - threads stay on 
the frontpage by being *debated*, rather than by being agreed or 
disagreed on, resulting in posts where everyone agrees and nobody 
has anything to add quickly falling off the forum.

I agree with all the downsides of votes you highlight, but as 
long as new toplevel replies can become visible, I think ratings 
are useful to keep valuable topics alive and promote interesting 
replies.