valME is young, granted. That doesn't discount the idea.
Yes, any content provider can throw money (via fake accounts, advertising, etc.) at their own content to increase visibility. That's why advertising works. On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes. On sites like valME and Updn, there will be a (minimal) cost. It's a small barrier for manipulation, but a barrier nonetheless. That, alone, should reduce vote manipulation significantly.
valME also has a cost for downvoting. When you downvote on valME, it costs you 2 karma (and your downvote removes 1 karma from the content provider). This should significantly reduce downvote brigades as there's now a barrier to downvote.
Because moderators (and everyone else) can now see who is voting and in what direction they are voting, users who manipulate voting will be more obvious to everyone. Mods can then change permissions (both for domains and users) or use the modqueue to remove posts. (If mods remove posts and comments, like Upde, there's a public trail and a reason required. Additionally, the posts are taken out of the community's queue but still are accessible in the "graveyard" to prevent censorship.)
You're correct - many coders and designers do create for the sake of creation. More power to them. But you can't live off that. There is great content out there on various blogs and, if they don't have a donation button, the most I can do to really reward them when I like something is clicking on some random ad so they get the credit. Technologies like this, with the cost of a penny or two, don't put up a large barrier for content creators, and it gives them an alternative to advertising. It also gives them the potential for a huge upside when people really value their content.
The market here isn't for content providers of memes or 140-character comments. It's for higher quality content providers. I'm not sure why you're scared of the idea to find alternatives for rewarding people who give us value.
> On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes.
But that's offset by the sheer volume of people who can freely vote. If you have a system where a vote is a payment, you'll likely have a >95% reduction of legitimate voters, and likely a much higher amount of "gamed" voters as a result. Remember, corporations and governments have more money to spend than the average person. I.e. All governments/corporations can afford to spend money + some individuals can spend money. Compare that with: All governments/corporations can freely upvote + all individuals can freely upvote. Requiring money actually skews voting in the wrong direction.
That's why I think Reddit made a smart decision when they implemented Reddit guilding for top-level comments. They did it in such a way that guilding doesn't affect voting, and guilded comments can't even be seen from the homepage--otherwise it would skew the results.
I do totally agree about other ways to support creators, though. I think it's crucial for sites like StackOverflow to implement direct tipping for users' efforts.
You might be right - that, ultimately, we find that the system can be gamed more. That's not our hunch, and it's way too early to tell at this point, but we won't ignore the results if that's how it turns out.
StackOverflow really needs to implement this functionality, though. The hours upon hours we've saved by some of the answers there really deserved a real reward.
Yes, any content provider can throw money (via fake accounts, advertising, etc.) at their own content to increase visibility. That's why advertising works. On sites like reddit and FB, it costs the content providers effectively nothing to manipulate votes. On sites like valME and Updn, there will be a (minimal) cost. It's a small barrier for manipulation, but a barrier nonetheless. That, alone, should reduce vote manipulation significantly.
valME also has a cost for downvoting. When you downvote on valME, it costs you 2 karma (and your downvote removes 1 karma from the content provider). This should significantly reduce downvote brigades as there's now a barrier to downvote.
Because moderators (and everyone else) can now see who is voting and in what direction they are voting, users who manipulate voting will be more obvious to everyone. Mods can then change permissions (both for domains and users) or use the modqueue to remove posts. (If mods remove posts and comments, like Upde, there's a public trail and a reason required. Additionally, the posts are taken out of the community's queue but still are accessible in the "graveyard" to prevent censorship.)
You're correct - many coders and designers do create for the sake of creation. More power to them. But you can't live off that. There is great content out there on various blogs and, if they don't have a donation button, the most I can do to really reward them when I like something is clicking on some random ad so they get the credit. Technologies like this, with the cost of a penny or two, don't put up a large barrier for content creators, and it gives them an alternative to advertising. It also gives them the potential for a huge upside when people really value their content.
The market here isn't for content providers of memes or 140-character comments. It's for higher quality content providers. I'm not sure why you're scared of the idea to find alternatives for rewarding people who give us value.