Guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on this - but let me know if you ever start a community website, because I want absolutely no part of a place where I can be punished for not liking things the staff wants me to like.
If you're going to run a community like that, why even have the people there in the first place? What you've just described is a blog.
I think what they meant was more along the lines of "for upvoting the things that are supposed to not be what the website is about".
If you are referring to the "Unless those users are punished for failing to evaluate."
I think that was meant to mean "unless those users are punished for not distinguishing whether the thing was in an appropriate location, and therefore upvoting something which does not belong where it is."
Not sure, but seems like a likely interpretation to me.
The people who upvoted things that shouldn't be upvoted are the problem. They may never notice that it was removed anyway.
So now the subreddit (which may only have 15,000 users) has to staff dozens of moderators just to keep track of the shit.
And those posts still polluted the subreddit. They can't be instantaneously removed.
> Why do you suppose that is?
Because in groups of thousands and tens of thousands of people, there's always someone who thinks not only was the meme post funny, but that everyone should lighten up and allow it anyway.
They argue publicly in a pseudo-anonymous forum. And you can't make them stop either, or even more backlash occurs. Nor can you remain silent, or out-argue them.
So a flame war erupts, and everything goes off-topic even more.
> An upvote can mean "like", or "on topic", or "contributes to the discussion", or about 20 other positive things. A downvote can have just as many other meanings in the other direction. The other thing is that with multireddits and /r/all, "on-topic-ness" isn't even going to be evaluated by the users
Unless those users are punished for failing to evaluate.