Voting for forum posts

[Q. Schroll]

On Wednesday, 31 March 2021 at 21:40:15 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> Online voting is emotionally toxic and logically fallacious.

You're wrong, like really wrong. If that were true, 
[SO](https://stackoverflow.com) should be the pinnacle of 
emotionally toxic and logically fallacious posts when it comes to 
programming topics, but it's exactly the contrary: SO is one of 
the best if not *the* best resource for programming questions 
— and I'd claim it is because of their voting system and 
not in spite of it.

But I do see where you're coming from. You're probably thinking 
of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, you name it. Notice that those are 
for general audiences handling all sorts of topics. Voting turns 
bad stuff worse, when there's only one option (say, "Like", but 
no "Dislike"). YouTuber EmpLemon made a great video¹ that not 
only explains why dislikes are good but also why likes are good. 
One of the best features a voting system brings is enabling 
people to say "this is good" or "this is bad" without disrupting 
a discussion and without needing to qualify it. Posts containing 
*only* "+1" (or "Disagree") are a bad replacement of voting and, 
in the presence of a voting system, can be regarded as spam.

> We're better off without it.

Now, you're talking. *We,* the users of the D Language Forum, 
probably don't need voting. That's because there's a difference 
between a general forum like social networks, a specialized forum 
like SO, and very specialized forums like this one.
The most value voting would generate is on DIP discussions and 
other suggestions. It may be stuff as simple as *Should the `=>` 
shorthand be extended to functions?* that have a subjective 
nuance.

Maybe it could be a checkbox next to the *Enable Markdown* that 
enables voting on a new post.

¹ EmpLemon: [*Why You Should Like 
Dislikes*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdGbOT8NXnE) (~ 30 
min.)