Hey! Thanks to the whole Reddit mess, I’ve discovered the fediverse and its increidible wonders and I’m lovin’ it :D

I’ve seen another post about karma, and after reading the comments, I can see there is a strong opinion against it (which I do share). I’d love to hear your opinions, what other method/s would you guys implement? If any ofc

  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    46
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    That real question is, what problem are we trying to solve? Then we can go from there.

      • blivet@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Individual users having some sort of reputation is useful. I always thought it was handy on Reddit to be able to distinguish people I happened to disagree with from actual trolls. The latter always had pretty high negative karma scores, and it was good to know that there was no point in engaging with them.

        • Kichae@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          The thing is, high karma on Reddit doesn’t mean someone has a history of thoughtful engagement. Just as often, if not more, it means someone whose well timed with zingers on popular posts.

          And incentivising that kind of take-down behaviour actually creates toxic communities.

          • blivet@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I agree with you that high karma doesn’t indicate anything besides popularity, but someone with negative karma is almost certainly either a troll or a political extremist of some sort. I do find it useful to know when I would be better off not engaging with people like that.

            • Kichae@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              As an anarchist, by most people’s standards I’d be considered a “political extremist”, yet I haveover 236k karma on Reddit. I got it by being helpful more often than I was an asshole, and by being judicious with replies on Rising posts.

              Does fact that that’s a pretty big, positive number actually matter that much if I’m in a mood, bring snarky and rude, and refusing to engage with you in good faith? Should it?

              If you had quick access to a button that blocked me for, say, 72 hours, and the ability to make private notes about me would you bother even checking the number? Or would you just decide that I’m being a jerk and you don’t want to deal with me anymore right now?

        • Jo@readit.buzz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          You can check their post history? Karma doesn’t tell you anything, really. Mine went up tenfold one day just because I replied to what ended up as the top post in a top thread in a much bigger sub than those I normally post in. Some people spend all their time in big subs making short, smart remarks that get a lot of karma, others spend their time in enemy territory battling people they disagree with. Some toxic people have a lot of karma because they hang out in toxic subs.

          The problem to be solved is how to order threads. Old skool bulletin boards just bump the most recently replied one to the top. Which works well on an old skool bulletin board as long as it isn’t too large, but very badly on a big site where a few big active threads can drown out all the others.

          I don’t know what the solution is. But the numbers don’t mean anything without checking the context. Karma is useful for ordering threads/comments, and giving users a bit of dopamine when they get some attention. But there (probably) are better ways to do it.

          • Kichae@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don’t even know that karma/upvotes are good for ordering threads or comments. It just encourages gamification, group think, and snark.

            I’d say get rid of down votes, replace upvotes with emoji reacts, and sort based on reacts + replies, but that’s probably just encouraging gamification, group think, and snark, too.

            Reddit, like other centralized social networks that are trying to monetize us, prioritizes time on site and generic “engagement”. Those are what generate the most money for the company.

            They’re not what’s best for us as users.

            Maybe what we need to do is allow users to quickly and easily hide comment chains - not just collapse them, but dismiss them entirely - and allow for user-scriptable and shareable sorting algorithms. We drop down votes entirely, because they’re just used passive-aggressively anyway, make blocking users as easy as possible, with temp blocks and notification silences at the ready, and then forget about user reputation points entirely, because they’re as meaningless as Dragonball Z power levels.

        • YellowBendyBoy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Or you could have a system where trolls and bad people are simply banned in stead of needing users to figure it out themselves

            • YellowBendyBoy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              They get reporterd and the admins ban them. Simple as that. And the same holds as for the rest of the fediverse, servers that don’t moderate well will get defederated. On Reddit bad actors can just run around unhindered, here not so much.

        • Valdair@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          This is why it’s useful at the account level. It’s also useful at the post level in order to build a sorting algorithm which raises the most engaging/important/interesting submissions to the top. Within a community it is important to help define what that community is - irrelevant and low effort content is suppressed and relevant/high-effort gets boosted. Moderators can enforce this by just removing and pinning too, but that’s almost always too unilateral, and the voting system is generally better because it’s expected that then you get a representation of how people in that community feel about it. It’s a good system.

          • jayrhacker@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            I can imagine some tweaks to help improve how karma is implemented:

            • Use Bayesan Inference to produce a ‘shit/shinola score’ for contributors instead simple up/down vote totals

            • Experiment with different recency biases for the score; you can trust that people will change over time

            • Generally figure out what you’ll be using karma for and make sure you have a way to measure how well it’s working

            • VGarK@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I’ve googled Bayesan Interference, however I don’t understand what you meant by it. Could you elaborate please :)

              • FearTheCron@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Here is a good general explanation of Bayesian inference.

                I think @jayrhacker@kbin.social is suggesting using such techniques to predict “troll” or “not troll” given the posting history/removed comments/etc. My personal thought is that whatever system replaces karma, it should be understandable to the typical user. I think its possible Bayesian inference could be used in developing the system, but the end system should be explainable without it.

                • VGarK@lemmy.worldOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Thanks for the link. To anyone that does’t know about Bayesian inference, do check it out!

                  Now I have an existencial crisis thanks to the video 😂 the funny part is that thats the same thing used to detect spam email…

    • GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      There are few things Karma system helps with that come to mind.

      For others:

      • Reputation
      • Activity

      For you:

      • That endorphin XP boost when you level up. Makes you more likely do engage after the first hit.
      • Gives you an idea how your comment has been received by others.

      Presumably there are other things as well, these just quickly came to me.

      • mack123@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        That is a good way to think about it. What is the need from the reader’s perspective and from the poster’s.

        One would certainly read a post with low upvotes from a author with high reputation if you are interested in the specific magazine. I wonder if the reputation should not be topic bound and not just general. That would be useful from the reader’s perspective.

        • GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Some kind of implementation of what you said would solve Reddit’s problem of mods reposting and deleting content untill it “goes viral”.

          • mack123@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            The exciting thing about this space is that much of it is undefined. It is all about the protocols and the main features at the moment. The 2nd generation tools will be born out of what we discuss now and think about now.

            How do you make sure a user is not trapped in his special interest bubble and still gets to see content that has everyone excited? How will we make use of the underlying data, on both posts and users to suggest and aggregate content.

            I think there will be more than one solution eventually, different flavours of aggregators running on the same underlying data.

            So much possibility. And we control it. If you don’t like the way your lemmy instance or kbin aggregates, choose another site or build your own. The data is there.

    • TheDeadGuy@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago
      1. The first problem is people tend to follow the hive mind. If it’s downvoted, they will also downvote and vice versa. They also will believe a comment with lots of upvotes and won’t fact check.

      2. The second problem is people will abuse a karma system. Bots can increase the reputation of an account to make them seem more trustworthy

      3. The third problem is that the current system let’s you see who is downvoting/upvoting. People take it personally when they are disagreed with and will retaliate since they can see those users and stalk their account


      I don’t think these problems warrants a change in the current system. The transparency is a crucial feature. Seeing the number of downvotes serves as a great red flag to warn readers that a comment might not be true even if it has a larger number of upvotes.

      This does take away the anonymous part of your social media voting experience, but the ability to manipulate the platform is greatly decreased. People that get riled up about disagreement will need to chill and you will need to block those individuals that can’t.

      I think this will allow the development of a more mature community by taking away some of the anonymity

      • GunnarRunnar@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        The third problem is that the current system let’s you see who is downvoting/upvoting. People take it personally when they are disagreed with and will retaliate since they can see those users and stalk their account

        I actually really like this. I’ve been downvoted a bunch, my kbin karma sits at negative, but it’s kinda neat to see that I haven’t been downvoted by complete assholes (based on their history) – makes me appreciate that we might just have different view about a thing (or I’ve acted like an asshole to no surprise). Nonverbal communication can be a powerful thing.

        Do I think it’s feasible to leave as it is if this whole thing explodes in popularity in a new magnitude while Reddit sinks? No I don’t think so.

        • TheDeadGuy@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It’s a definitely an area to watch but I’m a huge believer that transparency makes a community better regardless of size. If you being brigaded or abused it’s visible to everyone and you can block those accounts if you wanted

          The ultimate hope is that social media evolves for the better

        • Tashlan@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          You sound like a normal person who doesn’t take shit personally – some people really, really do take negative feedback on social media the way that you might someone keying your car, and I worry about the repercussions of downvoting the 'wrong" person who might seek reprisal. An anonymous downvote button feels like an “oh, fuck off” button, a public one feels like “fuck YOU for real” to me.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, the question strikes me as, “Reddit has this thing. A lot of people don’t like that thing, but how could we still have it without people not liking it?”

      I think we’re good as is.

    • VGarK@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not a problem at all. I understand that we are ego-driven, but then again, the fediverse is a new working paradigm. We are here because we want to. Genuinely curious what you guys thought!

      • CynAq@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        We want to discuss topics. This is a place to do that.

        Simple need, simple solution.

        You don’t need an extra incentive to make people talk about things if people talking about things is the thing you want. You don’t want to incentivize people who don’t want to talk about things to be active somewhere you want people to talk about things because then those people will start doing the thing your’e incentivizing them for instead of talk about things.

        I personally only want people who want to talk about things here, and don’t want people who don’t want to talk about things.

        • fishos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Exactly this. You want to incentivize discussion, not the dopamine rush casino/arcade that just leads to low effort, low quality posts. If people want to be here for discussion, then they will either lurk and consume, or participate earnestly. Don’t put systems in place that reward the opposite.

          • Deceptichum@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Basically they only want autistic levels of Internet “debate” and don’t want people having low effort fun.

  • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m against any kind of global user ranking.

    It makes sense to rank content, but ranking users just begs abuse of the system. There’s always those that will try to farm the system resulting in lower quality content. It’s also an attack vector for bots.

    I don’t miss the “karma” aspect one bit here. Rate my post quality, not me. On the other hand, tools for ranking users privately could be helpful. In other words a personal ranking for your eyes only would be fine.

    • OmniGlitcher@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      I agree. I personally found the system was far too addictive, in the Cookie Clicker kind of way of “bigger number = happy”. I sometimes find myself missing it almost, only to remember that it’s worthless.

      It also means I can more freely share my actual opinions, without that reflecting on some sort of global score if people generally dislike said opinion.

    • Ɀeus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      i do like the RES feature of personal counts though

      if someone on res had a [+10] next to their name, i’ll know i personally respect their opinions, even if i don’t remember their name. similarly, if they have a negative number, i’ll know not to engage as they’re probably a troll

  • puppy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    1 year ago

    What we have right now in Lemmy strikes the current balance IMO. Individual comments are upvoted/downvoted. But no cumulative score.

      • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        There is that aspect of karma of “if you’ve got negative karma, you’re probably intolerable” but I’m not sure how much that helps in practice vs just banning people. Karma can also filter out fresh accounts for high spam communities, ofc, that doesn’t work perfectly either…

        • Invalid@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Karma farming has always been one of the worst aspects of the other place. Repost bots will sustain them long after the humans are all gone.

          Throwaways are still an issue with banning.

          Some kind of participation based scoring would just bring us back to farming and alienates lurkers.

          Account age is unreliable.

          Hmm… I hate leaving the burden on mods but karma has too many negatives.

        • bionade24@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          This wouldn’t work in the fediverse anyway, as it’d even easier to fake your user karma here (on an own instance).

      • Machinist3359@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I agree 90%, downvotes shouldn’t have that much weight. That said, comments which are abusive or hateful probably should have long term consequences for the user, even if they are themselves not worthy of a ban. Maybe reputation can be a “strike” for number of reported comments.

        To be clear, here I’m thinking of “dogwhistle” comments which individually are plausibly fine, but in aggregate indicate this person is up to no good.

    • DrGiltspur@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      On the other hand, kbin has a cumulative score, but currently implements it badly wrong. Your cumulative ‘reputation’ is calculated as “boosts - downvotes”. So if you post a thread that gets 100 upvotes, 9 downvotes, 80 comments and 5 boosts, you are rewarded with ‘-4 reputation’. Nobody really uses boost, so it is very easy to rack up negative reputation.

      Thankfully, I don’t think ‘reputation’ actually does anything, but it is still kind of annoying to be ‘punished’ for posting.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I would almost say a better system would obscure usernames completely. Only show the comment text, and allow voting accordingly.

        • Invalid@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Federation already makes that completely impossible.

          I don’t agree with the lack of usernames of course. There’s no community when there is no way to associate posts with individuals.

        • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          The problem is Lemmy already can’t allow that. Every user is Multiple Man. If you ban or block me on one instance I can just come back from another instance. What’s more, I can just keep creating more and more instances to evade blocking or banning infinitely.

          My point is simply that votes on comments should reflect merit on the actual comment, not because you recognize the posters username and dont like them so you downvote them regardless of what they say.

      • RCMaehl [Any]@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        How will I upvote people for having a name like rimjobsteve or a username related to the context ala r/usernamechecksout! /J

  • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s a shame, but any sort of number-based system will most likely end up with the same problems as karma. Not having the numbers add up is a good start though, since upvotes and downvotes are only really useful as ‘in-the-moment’ indicators of good vs bad content.

    Let’s keep it how it is, so that we don’t have another social credits system that doubles as a dopamine factory.

    • LukeMedia@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Another element is that total upvotes don’t need to be shown on your profile. It can be on the comments/posts alone.

  • Technicated@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    I much prefer how Lemmy approaches this; upvote and downvote count per comment, no tally of total points.

    Way less people trying to Karma farm then and repost content for fake internet points that don’t mean anything.

      • SuperRyn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Tbf you can probably tell the actual numbers by looking at the % reddit shows in the corner, but that’s not very intuitive

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          You can do that for Reddit posts but can you also see it for comments? It wasn’t shown in my client app but perhaps it’s visible elsewhere.

    • C3ltic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah imo the real problem with reddit was that

      A: they started fudging the votes so they didn’t really matter and they could shadowban accounts from even being able to upovte/downvote

      B: stupid fucking awards could keep posts at the top even if they had like -2000

      c: fascists were gaming the system with bots anyway to push their content.

  • sparr@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    Web of trust. The biggest thing missing from most attempts to build social networks so far. A few sites did very weak versions, like Slashdot/s friend/foe/fan/freak rating system.

    Let me subscribe, upvote, downvote, filter, etc specific content. Let me trust (or negative-trust) other users (think of it like “friend” or “block”, in simple terms)

    Then, and this is the key… let me apply filters based on the sub/up/down/filter/etc actions of the people I trust, and the people they trust, etc, with diminishing returns as it gets farther away and based on how much people trust each other.

    Finally, when I see problematic content, let me see the chain of trust that exposed me to it. If I trust you and you trust a Nazi, I may or may not spend time trying to convince you to un-trust that person, but if you fail or refuse then I can un-trust you to get Nazi(s) out of my feed.

    • I think a thing like this will even be required in the near future. Because we can no longer trust that we are talking to real humans, therefore some trust system (including physical interaction perhaps?) will be needed to not get social networks drown in AI dystopia. I have bookmarked this comment which describes the krass scenario we might find ourselves in soon: https://lemmy.ml/comment/878882
      @dedale@kbin.social

    • OmniGlitcher@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It’s a novel idea, I can certainly see the nice implications of it, but it also seems incredibly excessive. Would you really going around flagging every user you see on a trust system? Or even enough for the system to be moderately effective? And then expect many other users to do the same?

      I honestly don’t think I’d use it, blocking people is enough for me.

      • BrightCandle@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I maintained a substantial set of tags for problematic users of all types so I knew to avoid commenting or engaging with them. In an given community it’s common for there to be a tiny percentage of prolific posters who are a real problem and tags with res is how I managed that. It absolutely can work and arguably twitter’s block and mute functions do a similar thing as thevpy reduce a user’s presentation considerably.

    • VGarK@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I found very interesting the concept of chain of trust :) What is the friend/foe/fan/freak?

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    Unfortunately, anything you replace karma with will have the same problems that karma has. Any indicator of comment or user quality will be readily gamed by anyone with any skills whatsoever in automation.

    • falcon@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      thing is… in the end, karma doesn’t serve as that anyway (indicator of quality). It’s so easy to karma farm by (re)posting content (sometimes even stolen) in multiple communities.

      In NSFW communities, at least on Reddit, I see SO MANY posts that doesn’t fit the community they were posted in, but being upvoted anyway because… well… it’s nudity

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Karma may not be an actual indicator of quality, but it is often used as such. That’s the reason why all the bots exist in the first place and they are oddly enough* also the reason it’s not a good indicator.

        People look at top, People like to filter out the bottom.

        Look at the alternatives. Page views? They’d be instantly botted. Engagement? Instantly botted. There’s literally not any way to indicate that the crowd likes something or that something is of interest that can’t be replicated in a hot second. Karma is the closest thing we have to a sorting filter that content creators are doing the right thing or an indicator to content consumers that something might stand out from the crowd.

        I’m sitting here farming /r/interestingasfuck trying to make the /c/interestingasfuck viable and 2/3 of the highest ranked crap is garbage, The thing is, even 1/3 of it being real saves me from having to sort through thousands of page of crap to find decent stuff.

        edit* missed a word

  • asterzura@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think we should stop seeing Lemmy as just a substitute for Reddit. Lemmy can be it’s own thing, without having to do ‘reddit-like’ stuff.

    Imo, I don’t think the karma system is really necessary (it doesn’t even make sense) and the upvote-downvote is good enough to filter quality posts.

    • VGarK@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      That is indeed my fault. I came looking for something to end the craving and the void left by reddit. I should rethink my approach and understand that this could go beyond my ego

      • mordred@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        This is really a great approach not only to the matter at hand, but to life in general. I wish more people used it in the world.

      • LukeMedia@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Props to you for admitting where you could approach this in a more healthy way. Too few adults seem capable of doing such.

  • Sabakodgo@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    Karma does well in my opinion, however it should display the number of upvotes and downvotes, not just one number. Also adnn an option to sort by the number of downvotes.

    • finder@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      And an option to sort by controversial would be nice.

      Also add an option to sort by the number of downvotes.

      More sorting options would be a nice addition. Although, being able to treat down-votes similarly to upvotes might encourage more bad behavior. I kind of want to see such a system tested.

      • DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Let them have their pathetic fun. We’re never going to stop trolls, might as well let them get their dumb points while they’re at it. It’s not like they aren’t typically obvious anyway.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Absolutely nothing. Reducing people to a number and ranking their value based on that is inherently wrong.

    Keep it simple, the current Lemmy system works fine. Spambots and particularly disruptive people should just be banned anyways, a gamification system would not solve any issue on that front.

    • ???@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      While I still would like to see an alternative to Karma that’s less problematic, I agree with the idea that gamification will not solve issues. If anything, it creates a “KPI/score” people want to desperately meet for the wrong reason.

      • Railcar8095@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Let’s keep the upvotes to the post/comment only, do not show the overall of a user and don’t take it into account in any algorithmic decision. Let community managers see the ‘karma’ of the user in their respective community maybe, but beyond that it’s a feature that only had negative implications on Reddit

  • FreddyNO@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    We should keep it as is. Having an account score just amplifies a big issue with sm. The content should be in focus, not the people posting. A relevant comment should be hightened because it itself is good. In the same way we shouldn’t judge something because the user has a low karma, but because the content is bad.

    The idea behind something keeping a score on a profile is good, but it doesn’t work as intended in practice. People will farm in whatever way they need to get a moral highground. Not having such a scoring system will be a good way to reduce the incentive to copy/paste content from others.

    • Wurstkiste@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      A relevant and good comment, even and especially if it opposes the opinion of the majority. Giving downvotes to signal disagreement, when posts are sorted by karma and very low karma posts are even hidden, leads to circle jerking and immediately kills every healthy debate and controversy in the bud. If I have a dissenting opinion, I want to argue, not be muzzled.

  • chuso@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    What about hidden karma?
    Like there is still karma used internally to decide what posts to promote and how to weight votes, but the numbers are kept only internally so people don’t get obsessed with that number next to their (and others’) profile?

    • imperator3733@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Or what if a user could see their own karma, but no one else’s? If karma isn’t publicly visible, then people may care less about it.

    • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think this would make people more obsessed. We would see the rise of SEO-like shenanigans where they would try to guess what makes the internal algorithm tick, complete with “karma experts” to advise you on how to optimize, etc. more of a shitshow that just having it plainly visible, I think…

      • chuso@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well, I was assuming we were talking about open-source software. So you wouldn’t need karma experts to “guess what makes the internal algorithm tick”. If it’s open source, the algorithm is still public. You just wouldn’t know how much karma each user has.

    • Dick Justice@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      No, no, no, please no hidden algorithm. that’s as bad or worse than karma, especially with the incoming bot shitstorm.

      • chuso@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I didn’t say hidden algorithm. I was assuming we were talking about open-source software and hence public algorithm.
        It’s just your karma points that would just be kept in the database without putting that number in your profile.
        That changes nothing in terms of how the algorithm works. I didn’t suggest changing anything on how many details are available on how the algorithm works.

    • Bappity@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      given how instances have been popping up with massive amounts of bots recently and someone even managed to get on top posts from bot upvotes recently, right now this probably wouldn’t be a good idea… Though I tried looking back for the post I’m referring to and can’t find it. maybe it got dealt with, title was like “Protect. Moderate. Purge your server” or something? the guy botted upvotes to promote to instance owners how to protect themselves from bots

  • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    Subs should be able to force sort by controversial for comments and/or posts.

    Any damn fool can come up with comments that are universally approved of, or universally hated. They aren’t interesting.

    The phrase ‘trivially true’ applies - “This crime was a bad thing, and the people responsible shouldn’t have done it! I am very angry at them!” may be emotionally satisfying to say or to cheer on, but it doesn’t add a damn thing to the conversation, any more than “hur hur suck it libruls” does.

    There isn’t a term for the inverse of ragebait, but there needs to be. All the le reddit moments - the tedious meme-chains, forced in-jokes, etc.

    For subs where you want interesting discussion, you want to sort both to the bottom. It’s the posts that divide opinions that are worth talking about, almost by definition. If a post has a thousand votes but the total is close to zero, well hey, that’s probably worth seeing and engaging wth.

    Let people vote with their heart, use upvotes/downvotes however the fuck they want to instead of constantly nagging and whining about it - and then use that to detect and de-prioritise mediocrity.

    It wouldn’t be appropriate for all subs, but for some places, I think it’d be a huge improvement.

    • cashews_win@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Top 3 most upvoted comments always being unfunny puns was getting insufferable on Reddit. Everyone was trying to be a fucking comedian - that’s what was popular and got upvotes.

      The early Reddit you could have long, interesting arguments with people and you’d both be getting upvoted because you’re both making interesting points.

      It honestly feels like my brain is waking up from a digital coma since coming to Lemmy from Reddit. My own personality and opinions don’t feel pointlessly supressed and sanitised.

    • cjsolx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Judging by the controversial comments on Reddit, I don’t know if I want to engage with 50/50 up/downvotes for any significant amount of time. I think a 60/40 ratio might be a bit more palatable while still keeping it engaging. I’m not convinced an algorithm like this is the best course of action though.

    • queermunist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I really like this solution. Instead of making things more complicated for users or trying to control their input, observe their natural behavior and then respond to it.