At this point, if we can’t undo mass-voting, it would be better to just disable downvotes or voting entirely.
It’s not the only cause of LW’s decline, but it does contribute.
LessWrong is no longer even large or active enough for downvoting to be necessary. The activity of posts here is similar to Usenet, which had no moderation.
Usenet, which had no moderation
Some newsgroups were / are moderated. Most of the sci. soc.
Also newsreaders had killfiles so you could ignore people.
Same problems for decades: 4chan → moderation → echo-chamber
At this point, if we can’t undo mass-voting, it would be better to just disable downvotes or voting entirely.
It’s not the only cause of LW’s decline, but it does contribute.
LessWrong is no longer even large or active enough for downvoting to be necessary. The activity of posts here is similar to Usenet, which had no moderation.
Some newsgroups were / are moderated. Most of the sci. soc.
Also newsreaders had killfiles so you could ignore people.
Same problems for decades: 4chan → moderation → echo-chamber