Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

909

Voat seems to have gained a large percentage of idiots in the past several months or over the past year. One guy tried to prove his intelligence by asking me about the binomial theorem, which I learned in 8th grade algebra. I don't expect everyone to be expert in math, but one should have some sense of one's expertise, and not be a walking embodiment of Dunning-Kruger idiocy.

A year or so ago, if I made a reasonable comment, I'd generally get an up vote. There was effectively a group mind that tended to give comments an aggregate of 1 or 0 votes. (Uncorrelated, non-group mind votes would, statistically, be more dispersed.) Now, a great many comments are left at zero.

Neither of these is that extreme, but over time, they leave me with a sense of "Why bother?"

Voat seems to have gained a large percentage of idiots in the past several months or over the past year. One guy tried to prove his intelligence by asking me about the binomial theorem, which I learned in 8th grade algebra. I don't expect everyone to be expert in math, but one should have some sense of one's expertise, and not be a walking embodiment of Dunning-Kruger idiocy. A year or so ago, if I made a reasonable comment, I'd generally get an up vote. There was effectively a group mind that tended to give comments an aggregate of 1 or 0 votes. (Uncorrelated, non-group mind votes would, statistically, be more dispersed.) Now, a great many comments are left at zero. Neither of these is that extreme, but over time, they leave me with a sense of "Why bother?"

(post is archived)

[–] • 8 pts

Voat is Reddit reject land more and more everyday. 4 years ago voat was like poal is now.

From one former goat to another

Welcome

[–] • 5 pts

Ya that's why we moved here.

[–] • 5 pts

Honestly I’m probably the worst at upvoteing comments, but I know many other poalrs are good about it so welcome.

[–] • 3 pts (edited )

Yeah. It sucks. The Q folks are even dumber than the rest. It's unfortunate because voat has more links than the other sites and isn't censored.

I still go there but conversation is getting more and more not worth having.

I find that if you stick to intelligent topics only knowledgeable people have something to say. If you say something a about programming, people who understand programming will respond. If you mention the federal reserve people who understand monetary policy will mostly respond.

The ugly thing about attempting to address the Fed is that in order to make it a meme you have to make a pretty large body of people think they know something about it which means you are inviting idiots to your movement which will make people who oppose the Fed pretty dismissible to people cynical of people cynical of the Fed.

[–] • 3 pts

I agree with the OP. Voat has become a field of idiots. That is why they are having so many leave.

[–] • 3 pts (edited )

IMO up and down votes on any social platform are pointless -- no pun intended -- at best and wildly misleading at worst. The value they are supposed to provide -- namely to make 'better' comments more visible while sending the 'bad' comments to oblivion -- quickly becomes over ridden by glory hogging and agenda pushing. I rarely upvote any more, and only downvote when the comment is seriously off point or a clear attempt to derail the discussion and even here it's mostly out of spite rather than because I feel I'm providing some useful contribution.

I feel that if you want to see quality content then you need to put in the time wading through the junk; there is no short cut.

OP's sentiment "Why bother?" is bang on, but sadly so is "Don't bother".

On that note some -- ie. very few -- comments are interesting or funny and I can get a lot out of reading them, so for me at least it's worth my time to scroll through. But it's a crap shoot and mostly a huge waste of time, not to mention always take anything you read with a very large grain of salt. My grandpa used to tell great stories but even as a small child I understood that the real value was in his qualities as a story teller rather than in what had actually happened.

[–] • 1 pt

On my most recent 25 voat comments, I got an net of 16 up, 9 down for an aggregate of +7 votes. On the one hand, I should not be a crybaby; although, I don't see why there were any down votes. On the other, if I'm not doing anything inappropriate, and the comments are not appreciated, why bother writing them?