Another Reddit refugee here,

I think we’re all familiar with the Karma system on Reddit. Do you think Lemmy should have something similar? Because I can see cases for and against it.

For: a way to tracking quality contributions by a user, quantifying reputation. Useful to keep new accounts from spamming communities.

Against: Often not a useful metric, can be botted or otherwise unearned (see u/spez), maybe we should have something else?

What do you all think?

  • Dick Justice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not just no, but heck no, and no algorithm either. Karma at a glance doesn’t tell you anything about quality. High karma users can be anything from insightful posters to inflammatory shitstains to literally not even human. It’s not useful for keeping new accounts from spamming - new accounts are created every single day en masse for the sole purpose of accruing karma by any means for the distinct purpose of being sold to spammers.

    Karma also tanks discussions - every slightly big Reddit post is flooded with people repeating the same stupid “in”-jokes and puns that were funny 7 years ago by people and bots trying to boost their karma. The first few comment threads in every post become absolutely useless at best, and at worst, bots and bad faith actors clog up the pipes with ongoing spam efforts and purposely deceitful and manipulative misinformation campaigns that are demonstrably harmful to society.

    Fake internet points is an outdated idea that imho, has shown itself to ultimately be bad for communities. I personally think that while Lemmy acts as a great alternative to Reddit there’s no compelling argument for trying to make Lemmy an exact copy of Reddit. Lemmy doesn’t need to be a one-to-one mirror image of a website that we’re all literally fleeing because it’s a giant shit pile. IMHO.

  • benni@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Definitely no. In addition to the downsides you mentioned, I feel like the redditor’s desire for karma is what causes these hiveminds/echo chambers and cliché comments that are so typical of many subreddits.

    Edit: Thank you so much for the gold kind stranger!

  • Barroux@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No, karma turned Reddit into a hive mind. Everyone knew what everyone expected in each community and would push people to stay in line in order to not get downvoted.

  • impulse@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s a hard no from me too.

    Upvotes and downvotes exist to filter bad content. Anything that tracks points per user will just lead to toxic karma whoring and bots, as demonstrated by Reddit.

    In my opinion, Lemmy shouldn’t turn into a Reddit clone, it should learn from Reddit’s plethora of mistakes.

  • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A karma metric would just hasten the decline that happened to Reddit. People liked OG Reddit as a forum to connect with like minded people. The karma situation lead to karma farm tactics with the goal of selling accounts or promoting commercial or political content. The lack of karma will remove a reason for bad actors to do the same here. It also removes the karma motivation for low effort reposts.

    Comments should be voted on based on their contribution to the discussion. That’s a natural way to guide the conversation in a productive direction.

    I would prefer Lemmy et al to stay away from broad appeal BS like celebrity AMAs, and karma thirsty low effort people pleasers. It shouldn’t be a place for special events, it should be a place for productive community conversation.

    • Archpawn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “The karma situation lead to karma farm tactics with the goal of selling accounts or promoting commercial or political content.”

      Without karma, they can promote commercial or political content without bothering with the karma farming. Is that really better?

      • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think karma was used as a way to indirectly help their promotions. High karma accounts would have higher prominence on big subreddits, so their posts were more visible and thus more profitable. Reddit (company) wanted big communities, so the problem was a non-problem to them because it drove fake engagement and made their metrics look more valuable from a sales perspective.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Why wouldn’t it be better? The focus should be on the content of the posts and their validity, not based on an accumulative metric that is mistaken for credibility.

  • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Personally, I like that the individual posts and comments have up/down votes. That allows the community to self moderate to some extent. That lightens the load on moderators to police bad content, while simultaneously promoting good content. It also means that the community rules do not need to be so heavy handed as to suppress dialog - take /r/conservative as an example.

    But I do not believe that those votes should carry over to any kind of metric that affects users or communities in other ways. Perhaps a hidden metric available for moderators is useful for identifying problematic posters. But any kind of publicly visible metrics turn into some obnoxious internet point scoring game that invites shitposters and spammers and bot farmers.

  • Ace_Addams@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Karma made Reddit toxic and limited the amount of conversing people did on the site. Here we can have conversations without worrying about down votes and Karma.

  • hydra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It shouldn’t. Karma encourages the vices we’ve seen on Reddit like karma farmers, hive minds and threads full of unfunny jokes.

  • kwot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You know what’s funny? I think I voted more on comments here than my several years of reddit already. Having votes kept to individual comments instead of tallied up in your profile like this just feels better to me.

  • Ben@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Lolz that’s crazy… we should only take good ideas from Reddit.

    I’m happy that most folks (in this thread, at least) seem to be of a similar mindset.

    I struggled with Karma for a month, then I jumped on a few new ‘DadJokes’ and copy pasted a couple of puns - masses of Karma meant I could carry on trolling.

    Votes are the way to push good/relevant comments upwards or downwards - and without value outside the thread, they’ll only be used for that… as it should be.

  • kabukimeow@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Absolutely NO. Karma farmers were always annoying af, and it also makes people mean and annoyingly circle jerky about stuff.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nope, no need for karma whores.

    Edit to explain: The karma system reddit has, is obviously detrimental to the quality of content. Some people see it as a game, and play for karma, rather than actually posting something that is meaningful to them.

    Others put to much significance into it, and get bummed if they are not upvoted, because they think karma equals popular.

  • mrginger@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’d rather not. You’ll have people farming the garbage and selling accounts a la gallowshill.