>Members of a prior generation may remember that voting features were introduced explicitly to improve engagement, not quality. Those little triangles next to this comment are there to give you something to do, and thereby hopefully increase the chance that you'll feel invested in this site to come back. Not to discover the truth, improve awareness of facts, or build community.
What are you basing this on? Was this written by some website owner, or is that just how you feel about it? Given you can engage by either voting or replying, I feel like voting is much more about molding and curation than engagement. Replying is a much stronger form of engagement: people can see that it is you specifically who engaged, and you can express your opinion more fully.
I agree that "quality" is subjective and so isn't the right concept, but it's about a community shaping a platform's content based on the average of their preferences and therefore making it more likely any of them will want to continue using the community in the future. It of course doesn't necessarily optimize for truth, but it optimizes for the feedback loop of a site's users turning the site into what they want to see and being more likely to use (and vote on) the site more actively as a result. I disagree that the mere act of feeling like you're making a difference is what's actually enticing to people and what brings them back.
What are you basing this on? Was this written by some website owner, or is that just how you feel about it? Given you can engage by either voting or replying, I feel like voting is much more about molding and curation than engagement. Replying is a much stronger form of engagement: people can see that it is you specifically who engaged, and you can express your opinion more fully.
I agree that "quality" is subjective and so isn't the right concept, but it's about a community shaping a platform's content based on the average of their preferences and therefore making it more likely any of them will want to continue using the community in the future. It of course doesn't necessarily optimize for truth, but it optimizes for the feedback loop of a site's users turning the site into what they want to see and being more likely to use (and vote on) the site more actively as a result. I disagree that the mere act of feeling like you're making a difference is what's actually enticing to people and what brings them back.