If only voting represented quality and usefulness. Unfortunately, it's most of the time emotional. Throw in conformity and political correctness, and you have a powerful tool serving both.
Slashdot's metamoderation system is a pretty good approach to preventing users from mis-using their upvotes and downvotes. (Unfortunately, Slashdot's comment moderation system is flawed in other ways, so the benefits of metamod are hard to evaluate objectively. Also, metamod probably won't help for any site where trolling is the dominant culture, which describes most "comment sections" you'll find on the Internet.)
Comments
If only voting represented quality and usefulness. Unfortunately, it's most of the time emotional. Throw in conformity and political correctness, and you have a powerful tool serving both.
Slashdot's metamoderation system is a pretty good approach to preventing users from mis-using their upvotes and downvotes. (Unfortunately, Slashdot's comment moderation system is flawed in other ways, so the benefits of metamod are hard to evaluate objectively. Also, metamod probably won't help for any site where trolling is the dominant culture, which describes most "comment sections" you'll find on the Internet.)