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.
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.