Vote manipulation is getting more common. Some recent examples:
While the accounts were banned, the malicious voting activity stuck around.
Should admins have the ability to discard votes, and if so, which admins? Should community mods have that ability? Can you think of any ways that tools like this could be abused?
Do away with voting altogether and force people to think for themselves instead of just following the easily manipulated herd. Always sort by New Comments with no other options so the only things at the top are active discussions.
This also would make it so lurkers can’t influence the conversations they don’t actively participate in.
What’s the virtue of everyone taking part in a conversation even when they have nothing substantive to add?
Who said you have to participate? Not interested? Move on.
What is the virtue in liking or disliking a thing you’re not going to otherwise engage with? Why should others dictate what you are more likely to actually see?
Who said they weren’t interested? Your entire premise is based on them being interested.
So again, what’s the virtue in everybody having to comment even if they don’t have some substantive to say?
I don’t even know how you came to this conclusion. If you’re not interested in the discussion, and you’re not going to participate in it, why should you get to influence how others may see the content by voting on it and affecting its visibility? That’s the premise.
This is just in fundamental contradiction to how the Forumverse works. No content regarded as highly relevant and interesting can be filtered via your system and sorting by /new/ on a wider scale just means that a new post you make can be completely missed if no-one notices it.