I strongly disagree. Whether the points are displayed or not, voting is what revolutionized forums. I find voting forums almost universally better than non-voting ones, because voting sorts by relevance by default.

I still dread the (lack of) content quality that I've come to associate with phpbb forums (and their ilk).

The problem with the upvote/downvote system is that it's too simplistic. If you have an opinion that goes against the status quo, a lot of people will downvote your comment simply because they disagree with what you said on some emotional level.

Of course, past a certain number of downvotes, you post will be buried, so you have basically an echo chamber.

That might have it's use, too.

Echochamber sounds bad, resonant frequency response sounds neutral, and it's needed for harmony. The real problem then is kakophonie, noise, and choosing the instrument to play on with a nice timbre, noise floor, etc. The internet is large and finding the right venue and audience is difficult.

There is value in being told to have hit the wrong tone.

This is why shorter messages and twitter are important, it allows a finer grained ... censorship? (Zensur in German also means grade, shool mark). That's why many people, I at least, discuss online, looking for light conversation, so emotional feedback should be welcome as ''the basic unit of exchange in communication''.

People can sense when there's harmony in music, but what about an opinion? To me, the real problem is lack of emotional distance.

I was in a thread where a woman declared that all men are inherently abusive/violent toward women. I pointed out to her that this is not only a ridiculous statement, but also quite insulting. How can we make such sweeping generalization?

I was down-voted and told that my feeling didn't matter. Soon, other angry people joined in and my reply was buried. My comment went against a certain narrative.

But did I "hit the wrong tone"? I don't think so.

> To me, the real problem is lack of emotional distance.

I don't understand. True, objectivity is an ideal. But language is inherently subjective.

At that your annecdotal evidence, for example. Ironic, isn't it?

It's not ironic. My feeling don't matter in the discussion with the women, she just said my feeling don't matter, probably to invalidate what I said to her.

"High Quality Level" is a relative measure though. It's really easy for a heavily moderated discussion forum to become an echo chamber for the moderator's views.