>I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help
I think old school sequential forums were actually much better, outside specific niches they're harder to find these days though. Having the things everyone strongly agrees with at the top where they're the first to be read just encourages flamewars straight out of the gate and a lot of stuff just got lost in the middle to never be looked at again. But when casually reading you see replies from everyone, there's no distinction between controversial opinions and group think approved ones. One of the few I frequent regularly is actually a political and has posters with the full spectrum of beliefs, but the lack voting makes things much more pleasant than a similar topic on here or reddit would be.
There were a couple of other advantages too, bumping threads meant the conversation was over when it stopped being discussed, not when an algorithm decided it was no longer interesting.
Sequential forums can be good for discussions. It was definitely nice to be able to bump a discussion that was older than 16 hours to unbury it.
I like ranked forums for Q and A content though, Eg, like stack overflow or even reddit when I’m trying to answer a technical question.
Mostly though, nothing can replace a good forum culture. I just meant to encourage that with my remark, the downvote button itself is only bad if people use it recklessly
I think old school sequential forums were actually much better, outside specific niches they're harder to find these days though. Having the things everyone strongly agrees with at the top where they're the first to be read just encourages flamewars straight out of the gate and a lot of stuff just got lost in the middle to never be looked at again. But when casually reading you see replies from everyone, there's no distinction between controversial opinions and group think approved ones. One of the few I frequent regularly is actually a political and has posters with the full spectrum of beliefs, but the lack voting makes things much more pleasant than a similar topic on here or reddit would be.
There were a couple of other advantages too, bumping threads meant the conversation was over when it stopped being discussed, not when an algorithm decided it was no longer interesting.