Voting To Moderate Ranking

Description
This pattern occurs when users are voting on content, and by voting helps deciding what should be shown and what not.

Examples
Some comments to a video on Youtube are in bad taste. Because of this, other users vote it down, until it's not visible anymore.

Pros and Cons
This pattern is often good in that users moderate others posts, and through that, prevent abuse such as flaming. However, at other times, it could be used to vote down users because some have a different and/or controversal opinion about something. In this case, the ones voting are doing the abuse. Some people may also use this system to harrass other users, by constantly voting down their posts or comments.

Relations
The pattern is related to Group Moderation and Collaborative Filtering. It's also related to spamming, as that's something it can help prevent.

Contributors
Created by Andreas.