What is the meaning of the voting system ?
For me it looks like a democratic way for the majority of users deciding what's right and what's wrong. And that's wrong, because it's kind of the liberal motto the truth is the sum of all opinions. We hear that all day in the anti-christian world.
Since the majority of forum users can be (and often is) wrong on important matters, the votes can lead to very wrong impressions. I think some people will or already hold back to say uncomfortable truths because they fear to get voted down by anonymous users.
The majority of users even on a catholic forum don't automatically need to be right. For example there can be silent users who are not very catholic and use the vote system to discredit catholic posts or authors anonymously. Also, since the official SSPX is slipping towards liberal positions more and more (censoring Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers like Bishop Williamson; "elder brothers" Newchurch heresy; financial globalism (Krah); non-geocentrism, etc), so we can expect to see more SSPX catholics using the forum's voting system for more liberal positions. Again anonymously, which means no argumentation.
Having used your voting system at large for several months now, I came to the following conclusion: Let's cancel this democratic, anonymous voting system please.
Or let's use another system found on some forums called "Appreciate system". With it a user has the option to publicly appreciate a certain post by clicking on an icon next to it. The user's name will then be publicly tagged to that post so that all other users can see who appreciated that post.
On CathInfo, the truth IS the sum of all opinions. We're good, serious, well-informed Catholics here. If we can't trust the CathInfo vote, then what can we trust?
I'm sorry, but in my experience when CathInfo members *seriously* downvote something, it's hogwash. I'm not talking about 1 or 2 downvotes from a few personal enemies, I'm talking about 10 or 15 downvotes.
The same goes for upvotes. Anything less than 5 votes is the person's friends giving their friend an upvote. When you see a post with 8 or 9 upvotes, you should take time out of your busy schedule to read it, because it has a lot of new insight.
Please show me JUST ONE gem of truth or wisdom on CathInfo that has received an appreciable number of downvotes and I'll be proven wrong, and I'll apologize publicly.
All you could show me is something highly controversial at best, that is probably wrong (for example, that Marijuana is to be smoked by the Catholic faithful).
By the way, Ethelred -- I'm not worried about CathInfo becoming a hive of anti-Bishop Williamson types. Do you know anything about the influence of leaders? Do you know what influence a leader has? Don't you think a rector/leader/king/forum owner has any directing power or influence as to the character of the organization he has power over?
If you already know that, then you must not know anything at all about me.