Sites such as reddit.com and news.ycombinator.com use the upvote/downvote system. Over time, this system creates a drastically different user experience from a free speech site like letsrun.com for the following reasons:
1) It encourages group think, which eventually wins and dominates discourse. Over time, one side of any issue, whether it is political, social, or running related will “win out” in terms of the population on letsrun.com. This population will downvote opposing opinions and ideas, until those people leave. At that point letsrun will be just like the aforementioned sites where one can only discuss what the victorious majority approves.
2) It changes the incentives of posters. WITHOUT upvotes/downvotes, posters are incentivized by the desire to help others, to share their ideas, and other (mostly) pure incentives that are caused by the semi-anonymous nature of letsrun. This is why so much good information has been shared on here over the years. WITH upvotes/downvotes, posters gain the incentive to maximize upvotes, which weakens post quality because, in practice, it results in a higher proportion of low quality posts that toe the accepted political party line. And again, the accepted party line will become a major part of the letsrun experience, as it does on all forums that use upvotes/downvotes. The best forum post quality is in the absence of upvotes/downvotes because posts have to stand on their own merit, and their only reward is one or more replies. While not a perfect incentive, it is superior to harvesting upvotes.Letsrun has been a great website and resource for many people. I would hate to see the Brojos change that experience by altering feedback loops that made this site what it is.
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