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>Refresh my memory, but upvoting wasn't even a thing until sites made commercial decisions to implement it.

I believe most common web forums like PHPBB had voting or something like it. Even imageboards have implicit "voting" by bumping threads with the latest comment to the top.

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As an active phpBB and Invision user for years, I recall voting being only available with plugins, and they weren't typically considered upvotes or downvotes but reputation votes for the user. May sound like six of one / half-dozen of the other, but it was still a very different environment.

In addition, bumping was more of a way to get attention to something than to vote. As when asking for help on a specific topic, or to let other users know you edited and added to a thread's initial post.

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