Voat: The Alternative To Reddit That Everyone Should Know About · 3:44pm Jan 4th, 2016
Voat: The Alternative To Reddit That Everyone Should Know About
A couple of blogs back I talked about why I don't like the upvote system on sites. To put things simply, I stated that the voting system on sites often attracts vote manipulation, clone accounts, bots, and toxic community members because everyone is competing to get their content featured on the front page. However, there is one site (besides mine, although my site primarily focuses on people promoting content they want to get seen) that is working to fix this. And this site is called Voat.
Voat combats the the voter manipulation issue in a few different ways. First of all, the site forces you to comment on other people's posts a certain number of times before you have more voting privileges given to you. I have implemented a similar system on my site, along with a code that will only bump content that has been commented on to the top of the queue. When you comment on something on Voat it also bumps it to the top of the feed. And of course the content that has the most likes will be the most visible. That is the one downside to Voat and why I am not a fan of the voting system on sites in general. This is also why I have made it so that the liking system on my site will never bump a post to the top of the queue, thus taking away voting manipulation entirely.
However, you take what you can get with upvote sites, and in the grand scheme of the universe, Voat is the lesser of the upvoting site evils. Another thing that Voat does to combat the voting manipulation issue is by cleaning out its community groups that are not being used for say a few months. The reason for this is because a lot of times companies will create a group on a upvoting site to spam adds and their own content so it will get to the front page of the site and then leave. By keeping the groups smaller and tightly monitored, Voat is able to get rid of a lot of the same problems that Reddit, Digg, and some of the other upvote sites have. The one drawback to this is that if a community member makes a group and lets it sit for a few months without posting anything, it is at risk of being pulled from the site. And this is why I have opted to let people keep their groups on my own site. It's risky, but it gives the community more freedom to create and post whatever content they want.
At the end of the day, Voat is the best alternative to Reddit that I have found. I have looked high and low on the internet for a replacement to Reddit and this is the best site (of a similar genre) that I have seen to date. Feel free to check out the site and post your content. You will find that the rules are a lot more laid-back and the community is a lot less toxic. It is the place where I am going to make a group for my art sharing site, and where I intend to get the word out about my stuff from now on.
Find Voat on the web here: https://www.voat.xyz
Disclaimer: Voat has no idea that I have written this. So if anyone from Voat sees this, please don't sue me. :P
Thanks for the heads up on that site.
3663721 You are very welcome. I just thought I would get the word out about it because I believe it has a better setup than Reddit and a more effective system of getting people's promoted content seen. I also like that it has less rules about posting content than Reddit does. I mean, if you read the Reddit bylaws, they make it almost impossible to share anything if you haven't commented on other people's stuff and upvoted everything in the popular Subreddits. You still have to comment on Voat, yes, but at least there is more leeway on what you can post in the various groups and people's individual content has a better chance of being seen because they constantly get rid of the spam accounts, fake groups, and other things that lead people away from discovering the cool stuff.
3663733 And that is a good thing, and leaving a comment along side a rating is the same as Newgrounds so that's something I'm familiar with. Hell got to vote for the top five flash videos for this month and they had some good ones too.
3663766 I actually don't mind the upvote system on Newgrounds because I feel it implements a fair voting system, similar to what Voat does. I also don't mind the upvote system on StumbleUpon but if I am going to be honest, I am not a big fan of the way that StumbleUpon is set up, which is why I chose to showcase Voat as a good alternative to Reddit instead.
3663780 Alright I'll have a look at it some time.
3663806 Voat is definitely worth checking out. ;) I think I am going to permanently move over there from Reddit.
I'd check if I had time.
3664765 I just thought I'd put it out there for anyone who might be interested. :)
3664822 Can you remind me where that contest with the fairy tales was? The thread.
3665117 Sure! You can find it here: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/207724/the-equestrian-writers-guild/thread/227948/contest-fairy-tale-registration-closing-date-approaching