The news mod team has asked to no longer be a part of the project until we have a composite tool that polls multiple sources for a more balanced view.
It will take a few hours, but FOR NOW there won't be a bot giving reviews of the source.
The goal was simple: make it easier to show biased sources. This was to give you and the mods a better view of what we were looking at.
The mod team is in agreement: one source of truth isn't enough. We are working on a tool to give a composite score, from multiple sources, all open source.
Perhaps it is true that you've considered all feedback, but I'm sure you can acknowledge my point that comments from mods suggesting that the most downvoted comments are all opposition to the bot, or that votes on upvoted comments ought to be ignored because of vote manipulation might cause those who are opposed to feel as though their opinions have been dismissed.
Regardless, while I look forward to your response should you wish to offer one, I've had my say and I feel as though I've been heard.
Yes, cutting a snippet out of a sentence with broader context is a classic form of bad faith argumentation:
if we’re not allowed to point to votes as a source of valid information, then sorting by “top” is equally invalid.
The "if" conditional is pretty fundamental in that sentence. To cut it out and then paraphrase it to mean something it doesn't is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
I've seen mods suggesting that there is nuance and a diversity of opinion. Its often as a counterpoint to users suggesting that there is monolithic opposition from the users, and mods are forcing something that no one wants. When someone claims to speak for the whole community, then their comment gets dozens of downvotes, those votes are relevant feedback as well.
There is a challenge when portions of the community have mutually exclusive preferences. There is a greater challenge when one portion considers any action based on other's preferences unjustifiable.