Are votes actually ruining niche communities?

Been thinking about the voting system lately and how it inevitably kills in-depth discussion in growing communities.

Every sub/community follows the same trajectory: starts small with passionate users sharing quality content/discussion → grows in popularity → memes and low-effort posts flood in → actual discussion gets buried or downvoted.

I'm guilty of this too tbh. I realized I use upvotes/downvotes as personal "like/dislike" buttons rather than judging relevance to the community.

Here's my hot take:

1. Voting should be restricted to subscribed users only
2. Downvotes should be capped at a fraction of total upvotes a user gives out

The clearest example of this failure is gonewild. The demographics mean male content (which is 100% allowed) gets mass-downvoted into oblivion while female content dominates the front page. It's not about quality or relevance anymore - it's just a popularity contest.

Anyone else feel like the voting system needs a complete rethink?