If Lemmy's karma system can stay as it is, without adopting the Reddit way of how it handles it, I guess it's fine. Personally, I'd like to at least have some place to go to, that doesn't have likes, doesn't have karma points or anything. Because it just encourages people to groom themselves to say things, that'll garner the most attention. It invalidates your way of thinking and makes you check back on scores to feel validated.

I hate that I can't go almost anywhere anymore, without seeing some stupid form of a karma points system. It serves no purpose. Reddit's is worse because they tie your account to it. Don't have enough? Welp, too bad, can't post here. Got downvoted to oblivion? Welp, too bad, gotta wait some 10 minutes and fill a stupid captcha check.

If Lemmy can avoid that, then fine, I guess.

[–] joe 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I spent a fair amount of time on reddit over something around 15 years (I think) and not once did I happen upon someone with -100 karma that didn't earn it by being a troll. I found it very useful to be able to weed out people who weren't actually commenting to further the conversation, but derail it. Is that the type of thing you're talking about not wanting?

[–] Piers 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People are confusing (probably due to intentional prompting by those trolls trying to have bystanders fight their battles for them) the very real problem on Reddit that if you chase karma there were benefits to be had in terms of credibility and reach of your messaging and so whatever entities might benefit from such would tend to fill the space over in Reddit with content like that. Realistically that doesn't change the most common content much as it really comes down to the sort of thing people will upvote but it did make it a bit worse. That's being confused with some notion that somehow anyone who wasn't chasing karma was entirely ignored. That just isn't true. You might not be the absolute center of attention unless you've either post or said something especially worthwhile but so what?

[–] joe 2 points 1 year ago

I had a fair amount of karma over there and it didn't seem to grant me any special privileges that I could see. The issue for lemmy, is that the data is there, being federated. Maybe all the major platforms can be convinced to cap the top and the bottom, to prevent "karma whores". Say, a range from 100 to -100?

[–] SocialMediaRefugee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Frequently though people with -1 to -10 karma on a comment were just saying something that went against the hive or even dared to question it.

As an experiment sometimes I'd say something slightly against the tide, nothing even provocative. It would get downvoted into the basement and I'd see it start slowly then it would get pigpiled on. Then I'd post the same comment, say, a few hours later and it would be strongly upvoted. The same pattern of slowly getting upvoted and then rapidly increasing.

[–] joe 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, definitely-- I'm going through a bit of that myself right now, but I don't think that makes a karma system worthless.

[–] OrderedChaos 2 points 1 year ago

A point system does help to bring popular topics to the top. If someone gives good advice and it gets enough upvotes then it rises to get more views by the larger audience. I think if there was a way to eliminate the point system and still give good stuff a louder voice then I would say that's the system we need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You could basically always skip the first 3-5 comments on every post because their only purpose was to gain as much karma as possible. There were way too many generic comments that you would see over and over

[–] chakan2 1 points 1 year ago

Uh...go to Discord then. It seems like a free for all.