After a couple days of discussions about the newly implemented vote quota, I’m kinda exhausted. It seems like a situation we won’t ever agree on. Me personally, I don’t want to argue like this over a piece of software that I have high regards for. It tears us apart, where we should work together.
It’s okay if there is a quota on piefed.social the instance.
It’s not okay if there is a default quota of 240 on PieFed the software - and thus for all instances.
I suggest it should be implemented like this:
- It should not be a default value
- It should be an empty input in the admin interface, where instance admins can set a vote quota if they want to, or leave it empty to disable the vote quota.
- The /about page should display the set vote quota.
That way all instances can decide for themselves and users can see the instances’ vote quota transparently.
Okay but historically, limiting votes does not end well.
So maybe implement ranked choice voting instead? j/k as far as this proposed solution but I hope you see what I mean here in terms of the underlying issue: democracy itself offers both problems and solutions to those who use it, hence why it is failing all across the globe.
Also, at least up until now, people have been offered a full CHOICE as to how much votes affect them, personally. Sorting by New ignores votes entirely, while sorting by Top used to consider all votes, but now will consider only some of them (if half are being discarded, some by the vote quota itself and others by people changing their behavior as a result of needing to constrain their votes, or at least hearing the signal loud and clear that lots and lots of votes are undesirable, hence they stop offering them). I haven’t thought about how this impacts users of Scaled sorting, which I myself never use, personally speaking.