In the short term here’s what we are going to do:
The Twitter and RSS feeds will take you to the Comments page rather than direct to the url (@Stii’s suggestion). This will at least give people the opportunity to vote on the item. Its similar to what Digg does and although it means one extra click for the user IMO its worth a try.

We are *not* going to bring back downvoting, at least not in the current version. As people have pointed out this has gone back and forth and there was a huge discussion about the mod points and that was supposed to put it to bed. I agree its not as simple, but the simplicity of the downvote hides the fact that a downvote and an upvote are not symmetric. (A downvote has far more power see this excellent article: http://keithmclachlan.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=66&Itemid=1)
Another reason is that I would rather focus development on the new version which addresses many of the UI concerns.

Yeah, mod points works for some it seems. I’m a lazy bugger. The quicker, the better for me. That’s why I prefer the down vote button rather as it is as simple as to vote up.

Personally, I think Mod points turned out to be a good idea. If you care _that much_ about the quality of the stuff on the Hot page, you now have 2 tools you can use to do something about it, and it can’t be gamed as easily as downvotes.

Also, I’m not sure the quality of the content has anything to do with self-submissions, as it has to do with the lack of good quality content in the local blogosphere at all. And if I’m so wrong on that point, why aren’t people submitting any?

I don’t do a lot of browsing beyond my favorite forums and news sites, so very often, I have very little to submit. Maybe that holds true for a lot of people?

Also, if you look at the contents of the Hot page over a period of 24 hours, it doesn’t move too fast. During any given period of 2 days, you’re practically guaranteed to see the same stuff there – so why bother upvoting if it’s updating so slowly, and the “best” articles see a lot of Hot time anyway?

So echoing what a bunch of others said, we need more users. Plain and simple. And we need those users we do have (and that are so passionate about Muti) to break out of their surfing patterns, because that’s how you find new things.

~ Wogan

Daniel, the reason it is not like Digg/Reddit/etc is mainly due to the fact that it is so much simpler. When the down voting was removed and the moderation implemented, it lost some of that simplicity.

If Twitter/Rss are such a big problem, here is a quick, win-win solution. Simply redirect to the page on Muti (http://muti.co.za/comments?sbid=34434) instead of straight to the article. This will have one of two effects, both good for Muti. 1) People will start voting again or 2) They’ll get pissed off and stop using Twitter/Rss to read Muti submissions and start using Muti instead. Both ways Muti wins.

Finally, Nev, if you do at all want to go mainstream, you sadly need to stop listening to every other suggestion (this one included), take charge and you make the decisions. If you think it is a good idea, do it without asking everyone every time whether or not they think it is a good idea. It works great while the community is small, but once it gets bigger, you’re going to struggle!