There has been a proposal for not using replies for voting.
This is cleaner and doesn’t expose everyone’s votes to anyone reading the thread.
I have a notion of how this would look, so I’m creating this discussion and the replies for each option as an example. Please discuss or upvote any of the options I wrote below, and we can all see how this would look.
Should registration of this instance be:
Perhaps add explainer:
This poll is based on the preceeding discussion: [link]. Please make yourself familiar with the discussion before voting.
There is a choice between several options.
Upvote those options you would agree with, downvote those you would not agree with.(comment to abstain? I know this could be abused. …)
Add an option: “Do not change the current mode of registration.”
… and i like to edit: Some information on how the final choice will be made may also be helpful (this could differ by subject): “The option on which the ratio of upvotes [(sum-of-votes – downvotes) / sum-of-votes] exceeds that of all others by at least 1.5 : 1 will be implemented; should none meet that target no change will be made.”
I like some of those suggestions. However, I don’t think down voting or abstaining should be supported. You either support an option by up voting or you take no action.
Approval voting systems have well studied behaviors and we should not deviate from that without a compelling reason.
Every approval / upvote is a distinct user endorsement for an option. The option with the most users endorsing it should be selected when that number exceeds 51% of the active users set we decide on.
Down voting and abstaining have been studied (and used), too:
Open + Captcha
Personally I can’t think of how voting can be done cleanly within just Lemmy yet. It seems like there should be a special type of post developed for it.
I see a couple issues with your proposal. Actual discussion can either drown out the options to be voted, especially the ones that are being downvoted. Second, the snowball effect would be even worse than comment-based voting, as the earliest upvoted options would be on the top of the thread.