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.
Forums should not have a voting system
Any kind of upvotes or downvotes create censoring, be it intentionally or by the nature of how we think.
Intentionally:
Front pages, top, trending, etc. hide posts that are low rated. Rating a post then becomes a tool for censorship as a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of prejudice against the arguer.
by nature:
seeing a post that is voted low makes people skip over it or from the beginning rule it out as wrong or bad even if the argument is true.
Imagine this as an IRL version. When a person speaks you see their “score” that other people assign to them. People that have lower “score” are quieter and filtered away for you. If you say anything that people don’t like they will rate you negatively and thus lowering your voice.