Upvotes / Downvotes on Chess.com

I see very few. 

The new features are mostly garbage, just like these upvotes and flares.

I know ur a mod but even u can't make a good case for the direction the owners are taking the site in.

I couldn't agree more.

To be fair Martin has always been a good guy, and genuinely tries to help.  If he has a "fault"(for lack of a better word) its that he simply parrots the company line. 

Martin is a fine gentleman and an ever-helpful moderator.  I don't think he's so much parroting as explaining things to the best of his knowledge (though often from the company's POV). 
The problem is with the decision makers, not with those on the front lines. 

Reddit is among the best of the Internet?

Maybe originally it worked like that. But now is just a collection of "echo chambers" and "mutual admiration societies". Those two phrases are among the polite ways of describing Reddit.

In fairness to Reddit it does have some redeeming features:

1. Sort by controversial. Although the details are secret it is close to sorting by sum of absolute value of votes, not by net value of votes.
2. It is relatively easy to create new subreddits without the involvement of management and moderators of existing subreddits.
3. They support and somewhat encourage creating throwaway accounts just to post things that may be controversial, whereas here having multiple accounts is against terms of service.

The other thing about Reddit is that with their long history and large user base the limitations of their platform are somewhat widely known. Even the very conformist marketing people are aware of them and at least some of them try not to play for the loudest echo chamber.

Edit: It is also worth mentioning one thing bad about Reddit that chess.com did right: moderators are capable and allowed to edit out offending portions of the user's post without having to delete entire post. Surreptitious edits of user's comments done by CEO of Reddit (and other highly positioned individuals) is a well know problem with their platform.

I'm sorry, but such a comment self-identifies you as either lacking introspection or simply as a paid promoter. It has no relation to effective communication whatsoever. It does however relate to propaganda. One-dimensional karma or similar re-inventions are amongst the recognized problems with superficiality and shallowness of networked discussion systems.

Same thing can be said about the designers of this forum voting feature. "Sort by relevance" is a wishful thinking when what is implemented is just "sort by popularity".

I certainly do not agree with everything that gets done but on the balance, I think the site keeps improving.

The site keeps improving?? In what way? Kindergarten posts on the forums? Reactions and upvotes, as if this is a social media site? Ridiculous UI changes, especially to group home pages? I could keep going 

The reason why the site isn't improving is because the owners are delusional enough to think that the site is moving in the right direction. 

Money is green, and the site doesn't care if its the parents money or the members. 

Yup Thats why I havent bought a membership in 2 years 

Good, but now follow it up by not whining like a child on the forums. 

How about you $tfu because no one cares about your opinion?  

I can tell you are a kid because you clearly think that people shouldn't give constructive feedback. A lot of people here have been pointing out site problems for a while. We are trying to make the site better by giving complaints 

But of course since youre a kid, you love stupid features like upvotes, flairs, reactions, etc and since the UI changes have been catered to kids, I bet you love that too... 

Seems to be a hitch. I was not able to upvote a post that I found quite profound.

im a kid, and I dont love any of the features

Looks like some chess.com fanboys got mad and downvoted me  

Good on you!  

I have nothing to do with what choices the site makes, or it's direction but things like Classrooms, Library, and Insights are good features. The forums really haven't changed all that much over the years, there's still a lot of nonsense posts, trolling etc. But the site was started to be a Social Chess site and shouldn't be any surprise it has continued down that route.

UI changes are pretty subjective and for the most part I don't have many complaints there. I don't play daily anymore and for those that do and those that play a lot of games, those changes seem to be less beneficial. While I take part in some clubs, I'm by no means a major club contributor, so can't say a whole lot about many of those features or how they are implemented. 

I have seen bugs get fixed and changes made based on feedback of members. Not everyone is going to like all the changes and what is the right direction for some may not be the right one for others. Can't please everyone .

Really? Does it look like anyone here is pleased? 

I've seen plenty of people in the forums that both like and dislike many of the same features. The comments one post gets isn't terribly indicative of everyone

Very weak rhetorical question.

In this thread at least @Ian_Rastall and @Chr0mePl8edSt0vePipe expressed their pleasure and made cogent arguments why they are with the happy changes.

Maybe you should re-read the thread from the beginning?